#(though given the lack of. just about everything that's needed for self-powered flight there's probably chaos energy or something at play)

[duckapus]

Actually I find it kind of funny that, if Cream does unlock her Babylonian form at some point, it'll be a Mobian rabbit who can fly turning into what looks like a Mobian bird that can't.

This is admittedly an extension of my amusement that she's one of the few Omnitrix wielders whose base form is her Dedicated Flyer.

[stupendousconnoisseurpuppy]

The son's warmth

Yandere! Hinata x Reader

Notes: This is my entry for @seijorhi's Deal with the devil collaboration~

Warnings: DARK CONTENT, Violence detail, injury detail, manipulation, kidnap, yandere.

Please refrain from reading if you are uncomfortable with the above!

That said, please enjoy!

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Generosity. You suppose it could be a bit of a double-edged sword.

Although in hindsight, all you had wanted was to care for the exuberant ball of sunshine you had believed was dealt a bad hand. Parents and younger sister deceased, orphaned at the tender age of 14 and placed in a less than ideal environment - one devoid of love.

You had always been one of a large sympathetic capacity and it had always been a goal of yours, born of the principle’s kindness and compassion, passed on by your parents and sanctioned by your entry into adulthood; allowing you to action your desire to care for a young child struck by tragedy…

You’re not exactly sure, however, how that’d landed you in the basement of your own house with a broken leg and shattered kneecaps.

It was to be expected you'd reasoned at first, you had defied common sense and made a deal with a less than savoury entity.

Too bad you hadn't considered the fact that demons could come in the shape of fair seeming, walking tangerines with an aptitude for overbearing affection.

To his defence (something you’ve now come to consider a very ironic concept) Hinata wasn’t exactly - as far as signatories go - the one you'd even made this... deal with. It had been his orphanage, an institution shrouded in fraud and doused in the bitter aroma of embezzlement that had sealed your fortunes in the form of crisp white adoption papers.

You didn’t mind his clingy nature, the crushing strength of his grip when his hand found - sought - yours… actions that could and would have seemed to untrained eyes like a misplaced and overwhelming sense of desperation, like the shock of betrayal carved upon his features when your focus wasn’t solely trained on him, or the unnerving intensity pooling beneath glittering brown iris’ whenever they met yours during his volleyball matches. Again, this was something you’d chalked down to an amalgamation of a passion for the sport, desire to win and an appreciation for the fact that his beloved mother had come to show him the support he had clearly lacked in the early stages of his teenage years.

After all, what was a guardian without unconditional devotion to their child?

He was the coolness of your eyes whilst paradoxically, providing an all-encompassing warmth (much like the sun) and with an ostensibly boundless supply of energy. Such was the ardour that made your heart swell with pride. It was just a terrible pity – in your case at least - that this energy he had was now being put towards severing your contact with the outside world.

Wanted to go outside? He’d want you to help him practice.

Meeting someone? He’d pout and complain.

How could you refuse? You’d naively attributed such possessiveness to the trauma of losing his family and would excuse such behaviour in consideration of the circumstance. It was only natural. You’d decided to be there for him, accepting the responsibility as soon as you’d inked your name on the dotted line… if he needed a little more attention, that’s what he’d get.

And so, the story progressed until towards the end of his third year of high school, he’d decided the affection you were providing him with, however plentiful, wasn’t nearly as satisfactory as he knew it could be. For you still to be surrounded by others must mean his slice of the pie was diminished in size and a growing boy such as himself needed all the nutrition he could get. He’d reasoned that the entirety of said “pie” belonged to him, anyway. Surely no one could chastise him for exercising a due right over his own property?

He didn’t want to be the occupant of most of your time, he wanted all of it… And it was to be brought to your attention as soon as he arrived home from school.

No sooner had he entered through the front door than he was skipping towards your location (in the kitchen) with a blinding smile on his face, proceeding to grip onto your shoulders with a force that clearly betrayed his cheery demeanour.

“What’s wrong Shoyo?” You queried.

He’d went on to detail how neglected he felt whenever you enjoyed the presence of anyone other than him “It feels like you don’t love me anymore!”, like he’s not good enough, y’know? But it wasn’t your fault, all you needed was the chance to see that he was fully capable of being the only one you needed to depend on.

You were, at first, inclined to think of such proclamations as some silly prank, followed by laughter, declarations of how well and truly you’d been fooled and fabricated in boyish mischievousness. You’d managed to ask as such, but the speed and surety of his response had you becoming increasingly concerned.

“Nope!”

You forced out a nervous puff of laughter, clutching at the rapidly burning straws of denial because surely, he couldn’t be serious, but your dismissal had only served to become the source of his irritation and he squeezed you harder, fixing you with a determined stare that could only have been described as no less than peering into your soul.

You had ignored the red flags and were getting your just rewards.

“Sho- stop that hurts!”

“Reeeeeally Okaa-san?!” He quipped with insincere concern “It hurts more when you don’t care for me…”

It was at this bitter intonation that you’d scrambled back in shock and had prepared your body’s primal function of flight in the direction of the nearest exit.

But were you really going to run away from him? Shoyo, your own child, the coolness of your eyes and springtime in the haggard winter of your life?

Yes, yes you were.

And you would have gotten away with it too, had not the subject of your internal conflict taken advantage of your moment’s irresolution. For in a ginger blur of motion you were on the ground, he had taken a hold of your leg…

SNAP

He roughly covered your mouth to silence the scream, pinning you down with the weight of his own body as hot, fat tears rolled down your cheeks. The pain was excruciating, but you wouldn’t feel it for long, as with a swift hook to the jaw you were out cold. It hurt for him to have to utilize violence on the one he cherished; however, it’d seem a tad counterintuitive for him to give you the opportunity to run away.

You’d forgive him, you’d come around. You always did.

He’d swept you up and carried you to the large basement of the house, gently placing you on a worn settee; sickly ochre in colour - the one you’d been meaning to dispose of for years. His actions were soft and caring and his thoughts clouded almost entirely with his overwhelming love for you.

In passing hours he observed your peaceful state mindfully as his core pulsated in the cosy warmth of his rib cage, imagining what a future found solely in each other’s embrace would hold… eventually you’d stay of your own accord, he reasoned. He’d have no need to harm you or to keep you under the low, flickering lights of the basement. Defiance would become a thing of the past. You’d realise how happy you are he’d made the decisions for you, both of you, together…

“Why?” That was a question you sometimes took to asking yourself; more out of pure, unadulterated boredom than anything else. Something you’d already explored the answer to but thought it better to keep your mind occupied with trivial matters than to succumb to insanity (or the intensifying ache of your battered legs).

On that same note, though, contact with the world outside wasn’t the only thing he’d severed.

At the time, such an observation had very nearly made you laugh (and you could probably blame it on the fact that you’d always been quite partial to the more gruesome forms of satire). It was in an impulsive burst of inappropriate and rather facetious humour that you’d wanted to entertain yourself in the recital of depressing hymns (expected, given the nature of your surroundings), to congratulate your stupidity and wallow deeper into the marshes your own self-pity; only to be met with the simple fact that you didn’t have the option.

Your tongue? Gone.

And it hadn’t been the work of the proverbial cat, but your own son, who – cheery as always – had explained that it was another necessary action to stop you from hurting yourself, done behind the ever-wise teaching that prevention was indeed, better than cure. Could you not see he only wanted what was best for you?

It was then you were sure he’d dangerously distorted his self-awarded role as your protector and had lost his mind.

“Okaa-San, Its aright…” He beamed whilst you’d engaged in silently cursing your weak will “You won’t feel a thing!” - he flashed a guilty smile - after I knock you out…again.

And you didn’t. He’d sutured the wound (with what you really didn’t want to know) and made sure you didn’t choke on your own life juices, patching you up like the loving, doting son that he is… It was your job not to worry about the extremity of his actions, as a mother that should do everything in their power to put their beloved’s mind at ease.

Saved from the fate of Exsanguination… shows how much he adores you right? Not that you'd had half the courage or audacity to end your own life in such a macabre fashion, but even if you hadn’t been relieved of the burden of speech; you weren’t one to shatter another’s fantasies - especially if they were high school athletes with inhuman amounts of strength.

In the passing weeks, your mind had dawned upon the realisation that no one was coming to save you - and did you even need saving? – for your parents were far too busy, friends far too distant and dashing officer that’d do everything in his power far too non-existent. Shoyo was the only one who had cared for you, providing you with physical and emotional sustenance you’d never thought you needed - maybe for the reason that he had made himself the only source.

Another thing you’d come to realise, this time regarding unintelligible murmurs, is that they are very much open to interpretation. So even though his barrage of saccharine words were met with your limited arsenal of what might be considered responses, they been understood as absolute agreement, alongside the reciprocation of his affections. Which, to be honest, wasn’t that far off from the truth, as it was by that point, you’d learned the path of resistance was futile and that you were beginning to get used to (and even bask in) the flattery and praise he showered you with, silently and psychologically solidifying the notion that he was yours and you were his.

“You’ll stay with me forever right, Okaa-San?”

He giggled, placing a soft, lingering kiss upon your lips as if he were certain of your answer. And so were you. However, when he looked at you, tenderly caressing your form there was something amiss, a dormant hunger that hadn’t been there before, one that when coupled with the intensity he’d always regarded you with gave birth to towering waves of nausea and accentuated the persistent throb of your injured legs as if in subtle warning…

But you could deal with that later.

Because, despite the fact that his, short, brilliant orange hair had grown long and luscious with time and his scrawny figure had evolved into a mass of lean muscle, he still looked to you … like he did the first day he entered your care. Young, innocent and without fault. Unfairly dealt a bad hand and with you tasked to be the provider of everything he never had. So, as per the contract signed…

You nodded.

After all, what was a guardian without unconditional devotion to their child?

[tsu9live]

Before I start, this is in no offence to anyone else’s opinion. You are all valid and probably make more sense than me. This is a bit of a rant and then a short character study.

Warning: This got too long.

I tend to come online for manga updates and ended up reading through opinion posts because I am a curious cat. Most of the time I come across really well-thought out posts, really valid points. But then MHA is also a soap opera/family drama where the main character is not supposed to have any progress in his story unless its to bolster or move along the other favs . But then they shouldn’t be bolstering his story either because why is a story about Deku’s journey all about Deku?

But then there are people who are happy Deku is finally edgy and they want him to wipe the floor with his classmates who love him and are willing to fight him if only to get through to him. So there are both extremes and honestly there is validity in all these thoughts because despite the writer’s intentions, a reader brings the story to life.

I personally hate making my own predictions because most of the time I feel it ruins the experience of reading a work for me. I go in with different expectations and when the story goes a different way I don’t enjoy it as much but I feel its more my fault.

So I do understand and respect the difference of opinion because there is no fandom without discourse.

In my opinion though, this Deku solo arc was a long time coming and I think Horikoshi has handled it really weird. I’m still trying to understand what he wants us to think about.

A story about heroes and putting your life on the line for someone else is controversial, but, I thought it was a given. Recklessness had been part of Deku’s character but an overly-cautious character would do nothing. Deku’s lack of self-preservation wasn’t unnatural for a hero, he rushed in to save Bakugo from the slime-villain when Pros stood by putting himself at risk but it spurred AM to act. Katsuki experienced it as well during the war arc, when his body moved to save Deku.

Going to Kamino to save Bakugo was suicidal, reckless and potentially flawed but story-wise it made sense. How is hero-work anything than risky? Kirishima and Todoroki initiated it.

Disclaimer: Deku, Bakugo, Uraraka, Momo, Toga and Shigaraki are characters that are very dear to me because they have had me extremely invested since the beginning of the story. This is my personal opinion, flaws, rant... basically me working through my feelings about this manga I had been obsessed with recently.

1) There is an opinion where Bakugo had a right to be upset/angry/bully Deku because he wanted to be a hero but did nothing for it. Firstly, I don’t understand the need to justify his behaviour when he himself has expressed regret on it. People want others to move on from the “go jump off the roof comment” but won’t stop talking about how everything about Bully Bakugo was justified. Deku was weaker, but he had the same dreams, dreams that were the basis of their friendship earlier on. Regardless of how Deku wanted to achieve them, Bakugo had no right to keep trying to stop him from doing so. No, 5, 10, 14 year old Bakugo did not do so because he had the brilliant foresight that Deku would be self-sacrificial and it was for his sake, he was an angry kid and Deku was a timid, wannabe that confused him, intimidated him even. Taking out his anger was a way of working through those feelings. He was in Deku’s words “a punching bag”. In a world where the powerful reign, Bakugo couldn’t understand how a quirk less, weak little boy could think he could stand shoulder to shoulder with someone as gifted as Bakugo. Yeah, society is very much to blame. The change and maturity Bakugo goes through where he is humbled by a cast of amazing hero students who are just as gifted yet with inspiring personalities and then traumatic consequences of being kidnapped, watching his hero use the last of his powers to hold back a great evil, having that fight with Deku where he bared himself open, failing the licensing exam, training with todoroki, the internship... the war has changed him in a way that has brought out his full potential as a hero and a person. There is a lot to admire about him yet I see so many people fixate on headcanons that glorify his every action/word instead of praising the amazing person he has become/how well written his growth has been.

2) “Deku wanted to be a hero and he did nothing for it”. “He could have been a quirkless hero like Batman.” Listen, the story is about AFO vs OFA first and foremost. Hori has done a good job of worldbuilding and adding a cast of interesting characters that its easy to forget what the main plot point of the story is. But it really is about a weak/timid boy who was born with a sort of handicap who dared to dream to be someone strong enough to have others rely on him instead. A lot of the times people want to become something they feel they needed, someone who gave people hope just by existing. Its natural for someone who is ‘considered useless’ to want to be the most useful person ever. His mother didn’t believe he could do it, Bakugo told him repeatedly he shouldn’t even try, everyone else made fun of him, and his hero gave him a wake-up call, no... you can’t be a hero without a quirk. Deku studied heroes and quirks all his life, hoping he’d find something that could work for his advantage. Not every hero relies on physical strength, their bodies are adapted to the nature of their quirks. Deku’s analysis, quick-thinking and impulsive nature is what helped him progress even after getting the quirk because he didn’t gain control until really late. People act like he was handed power, seem to forget he has just learned to use it without consequences. His studies of quirks also made him the best candidate to get new quirks, quirks that he has learned to utilise as tools quickly and efficiently. He was doing what he thought was going to help him become a hero without guidance, without backing and constant discouragements. Its admirable and relatable. If you don’t relate to him that’s fine, your life was different.

Batman was loaded. Deku is not an inventor. The Editors shot that idea down because it would not have survived in a genre where power fantasies are the main hooks. Aizawa, sure he’s training Shinso because he sees his potential now but he would have either expelled Deku/moved him to General studies on that first day for scoring the least in that test. He changed his mind not because of Deku’s quirk but because of Deku’s ingenuity.

When Deku did find his guidance, he tried to do years of work/training in a short period of time. He acknowledges how far behind he is, that the rest are leagues above him and all he wants is to be able to stand side by side with those incredible people and he would go to all lengths to do so. DEKU has never said he wants to be the number one hero. He always says he wants to be one so reliable he saves people with a smile and later on, he wants to be a hero that can save without having other people worry about him. Bakugo works hard, he’s not just exceptional he works hard for it, all of 1A do but saying Deku does nothing when he is constantly shown, studying, training his body, understanding his shortcomings and working on it is just petty. You don’t like him because of his saviour complex, newsflash, that is a hero thing. Hero course is about that, Deku’s is just highlighted because of how often he gets hurt. How can you be a Todoroki stan and hate Deku (although to be fair its your right, I’m just making a point), the kid saw Shouto and decided that it was more important for Shouto to stop hurting and gave him a hell of a fight. I still remember Shouto’s smile, it gave me goose bumps.

Deku’s lack of self-preservation is a part of his programming so much that he hasn’t noticed it yet. Deku broke his bones, but he didn’t realise the permanent damage. When Deku got injured with Muscular, he was never intending to fight him alone. He wanted backup, his phone was broken and he wanted to get Kouta out and tried but Muscular gave him no opening. He was driven into a corner and fought his way out. Like Aizawa said, “He got that injured because he has no intention of dying.” Before rushing to find Bakugo, he informed his superior first, knowing she can spread the message.

The fight with Stain, he messaged his location to all his classmates, didn’t intend to fight Stain alone, just defend Iida long enough for help to come along. Fight with overhaul, he just wanted to get Eri away and when he understood Eri’s power, he gave her the opportunity to fight back against her oppressor by teaming up with him, keeping her secure with the cape made out of Lemillion’s hair. During the whole fight he was present-minded enough to take the fight away from civilians and managed to prevent damage and casualties. During Natsuo’s rescue he played support.

During the war arc, he realised with despair that Shigaraki was coming in all his destructive glory for him and tried to stop him before but he didn’t object to Bakugo joining him. In the movie Heroes Rising (the initially planned ending) he willingly gave OFA to Bakugo, because he trusts him with his life, and was willing to be quirkless again if that’s what it took to keep the kids safe, and himself and Bakugo alive. Its mostly been good decisions on his part.

Its the war arc that’s been his downfall. Watching his childhood friend/rival almost die, his best friend, his mentors almost die while he could barely hold Shigaraki back set off a fight or flight response in him. The seriousness of how Shigaraki came for him and left such death and destruction in his wake because he was not strong enough and AFO is a monster and the sight of Shigaraki and the reality of his situation pushed him down the current path. His solo arc started well because constantly training in the field has helped him master his quirk, and he had the backup of the vestiges who trained and guided him in learning to use it as a toolset instead of a one-punch solution. Then coming face to face with the flaws of hero society and the power, manipulative nature and destructive intentions of AFO has prepared him emotionally. He is not acting like AM, he hasn’t in a while. He is acting like NANA and i don’t blame him because she’s in his head. No adult stopped him from doing this, instead using him as bait to lure out the league.

When they started realising he’s spiralling out of control, that’s when they realised they messed up.

He’s running on adrenaline/fumes alone and I think he’s actually terrified.

“AFO is OFA’s responsibility” “Tell the world I am here” “You’re not as strong as me yet,” “You are not a worthy successor”

Deku isn’t self-centered and but I agree with the screw loose comment (its years of “you are useless, not good enough, not worthy and I bet a dozen or so concussions, bloodloss, dehydration lol). I know Bakugo means well and that’s how he talks. At the moment, he’s probably the only one whose sole goal is Deku’s survival. Deku’s like a wild animal, terrified, lost and as always backed into a corner. AFO has him where he wants him and I am curious to see how class 1 A are going to get through to him. I don’t want them to fight, all those fanarts of Bakugo reaching his hand out to Deku and then maybe punching him in the face would have been a lot better then the mocking (the slow clap was a little triggering for me) but again maybe it just bothers me and Deku needs it. I’ll just have to wait and see. Deku and his class together would be an unstopabble force and I am waiting for that to finally happen.

P.S. Class 1 A looks so mature, everyone going crazy about Bakugo and his tie and I’m here like, look at baby Kirishima and his roots <3

I’m sorry if I gave anyone a headache lol.

[vaguely-concerned]

Any tips for a TF POV fic? I want to write one because I too went through a time in my life when I let feelings bounce off cuz that was easier, but I feel like that's not quite on point for him 🤔

God I have SO MANY THOUGHTS about this and they’re all so wordless and frustratingly evasive to me yet (I am in the process of writing a looooooong T.F. POV fic and it gives me much more trouble than Graves POV, probably because as a person I’m quite a lot more like the T.F. Type in real life lol). But yes, here we go, let me try to express some of what I personally try to have as my hm ‘anchor points’ for his perspective. (Heavy disclaimer that these are just my personal & disorganized little musings and by no means the only or ‘correct’ way to read the character!)

- First of all I agree, the image of ‘bouncing off’ doesn’t feel quiteright -- it’s in the right neighbourhood but the wrong address sort of thing, but it’s really hard to come up with a way to explain how I feel the nuance here.

*insert three hours later spongebob meme here* Okay, so the metaphor I came up with is: T.F.’s relationship to emotions is a direct parallel to his relationship to water/the ocean: it’s scary down there, it’s dark, it’s dangerous, and if he should ever be dumb enough to try to go in too deep it’ll kill him dead because boy oh boy on so many levels this man just did not learn how to swim. As far as he’s concerned any sensible person would simply bob along on the surface in a sturdily built boat and try not to think too much about the weird shit that lives down there in the depths. (In this metaphor the layer of artifice and performance so habitual it’s basically integrated into the fabric of his soul is the boat. Y’know, the part that’s Twisted Fate and not just plain ol’ Tobias. I’ll hasten to add that I think both parts of his identity are equally ‘real’ and equally him, but the Twisted Fate part is like… protecting the Tobias part. Keeping him from drowning, as it were. I’m not sure he’d think of it like that himself for the longest time, though, I suspect he has more of a ‘that man is dead’ attitude towards the Tobias part after Graves is gone)

I think what I’m trying to get at is the idea that to him, raw emotion is as hostile and unknowable and unnavigable an ‘environment’ as the deep ocean. (And the only time we see him willingly go there, physically and otherwise, is for Graves, so you know let’s jot that down first of all lol.)

- He seems to genuinely quite like and be interested in people – how they think, what moves and motivates them, their secrets and foibles. So I tend to try to keep the uh ‘detail work’ in his POV focused in that direction. Priority going like 1) people 2) people’s valuables 3) the relative availability of people’s valuables at this moment if you have clever hands and a very charming smile haha

- One of my favourite things about T.F. is that he seems, I don’t know… quite genuinely good-natured beneath it all? If you back him into a corner some sharp and dangerous things peek out (he has survived in his line of heh ‘business’ for like thirty years, and a lot of it on his own), but for the most part and when unthreatened he has a sort of mildly amused and intrigued live-and-let-live attitude to the world even as he’s conning it that I find deeply charming. Which to me ties in with:

- T.F.’s first instinctive reaction to danger (perceived or real) the majority of the time seems to be ‘Flight’. Confrontation and violence are basically his ‘when literally everything else has failed’ options. (As seen prominently in Burning Tides, where he just keeps running and running and the only time he actually starts throwing punches is when he has to because Graves is in immediate danger and they’re backed into a corner. Which feels like it means something huh lol, I often think about what could actually make T.F. angry enough that he would openly express it and that seems to be the most likely angle for it in my eyes.)

- My take on one of the fundamental differences between Graves and T.F. is that Graves has A LOT of feelings but doesn’t quite know it (or more like can’t quite conceptualize it I should say) – he has a hard time identifying or finding vocabulary for feelings that aren’t some shade of anger. Meanwhile T.F. KNOWS he has feelings, he just doesn’t like it, ardently wishes he didn’t, and will do pretty much anything to run away and not have to engage with them haha.

Another important difference: when brought out of equilibrium Graves gets angry, and T.F. gets scared. I have the feeling that beneath it all he’s scared a lot, and it’s why his persona is so oriented towards gaining control in ways where people don’t realize it enough to even think try to take that control away from him until he’s already long gone. Misdirection as a way of life babEY

- This might be too deep in the ‘my WIP/process specific’ territory to really count as general analysis, but I think it’s there in canon too – there’s almost a feeling that he implicitly feels like he has to make up for some fundamental flaw or lack he has at the core? (Not a weird thing for him to end up feeling, considering what happened to him as a kid.) All the rest of him, all the cleverness and style and charm, is there to ‘make up’ for how at the end of the day he’s… wrong somehow. As Graves, who knows him better than anyone, focuses right in on, a coward. And that is CERTAINLY not the whole truth and even Graves in a full rage relents when he sees the effect the accusation has on him and once he gets the actual facts of what happened. But I think that sense of deep unworthiness is what’s stuck with him emotionally. His people left him because there’s something fundamentally lacking and immoral about him. He lost Graves because he’s not good enough, because he’s a coward who leaves people behind. He deserves to be alone. Mix in a ton of survivor’s guilt to taste, and I think you have the like… core emotional wound he’s constructed around.

There’s also something here about fear of profound powerlessness specifically in situations where words, generally his strongest card that’s not a literal card (har har har oh we do have fun here), simply don’t work right at the moment when he needs them to the most – he tried to beg for his people not to leave him behind, he tried to convince Graves to get the hell out with the rest of the crew… and it didn’t work. (In Burning Tides you see he’s given up even trying to explain himself, he just wants Out in whatever way leaves both him and Graves tolerably in one piece, even if he won’t be understood or heard or less alone afterwards. It takes him until like half way through the entire chase to even THINK about just telling Graves the truth. In all fairness to T.F. it probably wouldn’t have worked at that moment, but it does vaguely crack me up that he didn’t even consider it until all of Bilgewater harbor was already burning merrily behind them fhsajkfa)

- He has a little bit of a (perfectly justified considering his background honestly) chip on his shoulder, especially when it comes to powerful or arrogant people. There seems to be a special satisfaction in outsmarting and robbing specifically rich assholes (which would also be the people who have the most to steal, so y’know good times all round). From his short stories and few places in his bio you almost get the feeling that he has a funny sort of Robin Hood-esque sense of lopsided justice about it. (Robin Hood-esque only so far as to define ‘the poor’ as the eternally hard-strapped ‘T.F. & Graves Waistcoats and Cigars Fund’, of course lol)

I think T.F. both has a mind that tends more towards analyzing the big picture and also has more direct experience with like… structural/systemic powerlessness and oppression. So the cons they pull are probably partly how he channels the emotions that arise out of that (and the rest he just represses, like the relatable guy he is haha)

- Graves being back would cause some IMMENSE internal conflict in him, I feel – of course all the feelings of relief and attachment and love, but also… so much of who he is now came about specifically to find a way to deal with Graves being gone, with seemingly just shutting down the entirety of his need for real human companionship or closeness for like a decade, things that are suddenly starting to be brought online again and must be tremendously stressful to deal with when you’ve had it completely suppressed and deadened for so long. He’s put so much into trying to be fundamentally unattached to anything, anywhere, anyone (and there are some things here about perpetually being an outsider his whole life that I can’t quite put into words, but that’s a dimension too.) That sort of psychological self defense mechanism doesn’t just contentedly nod its head and go away just because something good happened one time haha. Probably a work in progress there huh (at least he’s not alone in it now <3)

PLUS some bonus Graves POV observations because man. I love writing him, he’s just a marvel of a man

- I know I call him a dumbass all the time, but in a street smart way I think he’s actually quite clever haha, he just has a bad tendency to get hung up on an idea and get tunnel sight. (I’ve based this a lot on the short stories but see also more recently his Sentinel skin voice lines for good examples: he’s incredibly straightforward in that ‘well obviously if it doesn’t affect me personally I ain’t gonna give it that much thought’ way, but you also have glimpses of surprising insight/shrewdness and… I don’t quite know how to put it, but something like an ability to get to the bottom line of something without getting caught up in the details. (I suspect T.F. does find himself lost in the details quite frequently, he’s much more attached to the decorative curlicues of the world.) Graves clearly & frequently has no idea what’s going on, but he strips things down to the essentials very quick: Lucian’s story as a direct thematic mirror to Viego’s, Is There A Sun Lady – Oh, I See, all of this is weird and creepy and needs shooting, and maybe most crucial of all: Isolde doesn’t want to be with her husband anymore so what he’s doing is just like. Extra shitty. He gets what he needs to get and then just barges ahead heedlessly with that. Icon.)

- He’s actually pretty darn eloquent in a gruff sort of way and uses some quite sophisticated vocabulary! And the way this is contrasted with the tendency to slip into blunter coarser language just as readily -- like when he takes the time to describe the monster that takes down the Prince’s ship in such poetic terms as ‘gargantuan’ and ‘the behemoth’s immense, distended jaw’ and it having ‘pallid dead eyes the size of the moon’, and meanwhile during his swim at the beginning of the story we get bastard cold and bastard dark and full of bastard jellyfish and crabs – brings me such immense and unending delight

- He’s more eloquent in his internal voice than he is when speaking (especially noticeable in Destiny and Fate; he does have a tendency to fumble his words when talking lol), and he gets quite easily lost in his own meandering reflective musings in a way I find incredibly endearing. I’d almost call it whimsical at times, honestly, hilarious as that is? Like when he’s literally so absorbed in a line of thought he forgets which way they’re rowing and T.F. has to remind him. (I think T.F. generally has more of a grip of what’s going on around them than Graves does lol)

- There’s an important distinction to be made that Graves actually does, by and large, read T.F: very closely and seemingly also pretty damn accurately. He’s good at (and clearly very interested in) reading his moods, spotting what tactics he’s using interpersonally, when he’s being genuine and when he’s being dissembling.

What Graves is actually bad at is understanding his own emotions, and to not bleed those emotions into other people’s motivations and behavior, especially when he’s upset or in heightened states of feeling, like he is all the way through Burning Tides. He can only name his own feelings in a vocabulary of anger, when it’s pretty clear from the subtext that there’s a whole bunch of other stuff going on there, and he has incredible trouble divorcing those feelings from what other people’s got going on with them right then. He feels hurt, betrayed, and undone by everything that’s happened to him, so the intention to hurt, betray and undo must live in the other person who he feels caused it. In less drastic cases you see him do this a bit when he feels like T.F. is being evasive with him – taking it as a form of rejection rather than realizing T.F. is just lost in his own thoughts, sort of thing. There’s a real improvement in this one between Burning Tides and Destiny and Fate, though, so maybe he’ll have an easier time of it with some time and practice.

Sorry it took so long to get back to you on this and that it’s a bit of a rambling mess, words have been real hard recently. Or rather I have too many words, all the time, left and right, I just can’t put them into the right orders to make any sense hahaha, I hope there’s some useful point in this somewhere for you at least!

[imdoingthismspaintadventure]

Worm Interlude 2 -- In which two sisters clean up a street

There were very few things, in Victoria Dallon’s estimation, that were  cooler than flying.  The invisible forcefield that extended a few  millimeters over her skin and clothes just made it better.  The field  kept the worst of the chill from touching her, but still let her feel  the wind on her skin and in her hair.  Bugs didn’t splat against her  face like they did against car windshields, even when she was pushing  eighty miles an hour.

Time for an interlude, it seems we will be getting these between arcs! From the point of view of different characters, to flesh out the world and the story. I always love when stories do that, put us in a point of view different from the main character. If done right, it adds so much richness to the setting.

It seems our interlude protagonist has the power of flight, plus some sort of force field that actively shields her against friction and particles. We learn this in the same paragraph where we also see how much she enjoys using her flight, so we both get characterization and powers at the same time. Nice!

Spotting her target, she whooped and plunged for the ground, gaining  speed where anyone else would be slowing down.  She hit the asphalt hard  enough to crack it and send fragments of it into the air, touching  ground with her knee and foot, one arm extended.  She stayed in that  kneeling position for just heartbeats, letting her platinum curls and  the cape that was draped over one of her shoulders flutter in the wake  of air that had followed her descent.  She met the eyes of her quarry  with a steely glare.  

Superhero landing!

I would certainly be intimidated if she landed in front of me like that! She gives me lots of superhero vibes in terms of her overall alignment.

She’d practiced that landing for weeks to get it right.  

Pfft. Okay she’s also a bit of a dork, and very human.

The man was a twenty something Caucasian with a shaved head, a dress  shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans and work boots.  He took one  look at her and bolted.  

You, sir, look like an underling of someone, and the way he nope’d out of there also gave me mook vibes.

Victoria grinned as he disappeared down the far end of the alley.  She  rose from her kneeling position, dusted herself off and ran her fingers  through her hair to tidy it.  Then she raised herself a foot off the  ground and flew after him at an easy forty five miles an hour.  

Classic superman-like superspeed / flight / superendurance is such a nice power to have. I bet you feel like a god.

It didn’t take a minute to catch him, even with the head start she had  given him.  She flew just past him, grazing him.  An instant later, she  came to a dead stop, facing him.  Again, the wind made for a dramatic  flourish as it stirred her hair, her cape and the skirt of her costume.  

She’s really theatric with all this, and I kinda love it. I feel like this guy is thoroughly outmatched.

“The woman you attacked was named Andrea Young,” she spoke.

The man looked over his shoulder, as if gauging his escape routes.

Grunt attacked a civilian and they sent the superhero cavalry to make him super regret it?

“Don’t even think about it, fugly,” she told him, “You know I’d catch  you, and trust me, I’m already pissed off enough without you wasting my  time.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the man snarled.

“Andrea Young!” Victoria raised her voice.  As she shouted, she  exercised her power.  The man quailed as though she’d slapped him.  “A  black college student was beaten so badly she needed medical attention!   Her teeth were knocked out!  You’re trying to tell me that you, a  skinhead with swollen knuckles, someone who was in the crowd watching  paramedics arrive with an expression bordering on glee, you didn’t do  anything!?”

Oh so he’s neonazi filth. Ugh.

I was already kinda unsympathetic to him from the start, but now he can choke.

Fuck his shit up, Victoria.

“I didn’t do nothing worth caring about,” he sneered.  His bravado was  tempered by a second look over his shoulder, as though he’d very much  like to be elsewhere right that moment.  

Fuck this guy. He’s also cowering like a little bitch and trying to look all brave in front of no one, like an idiot.

She flew forward, her fists catching him by the collar.  For just a  moment, she contemplated slamming him up against a wall.  It would have  been fitting and satisfying to shove him hard enough against the brick  to crack it, then drop him into the dumpster that sat at the wall’s  base.  

Taunting a girl who can absolutely ruin his fucking life, maybe not his best idea.

He almost got literally dumpstered.

Instead, she pulled up a little, bringing the two of them to a stop.   They were now just high enough above the ground that he’d feel  uncomfortable with the height.  The dumpster, mostly empty, was directly  below him, but she doubted he was paying attention to anything but her.  

Ah, threatening him with falling from great heights! The batman strat! Or one of them anyway.

“I think it’s a safe bet to say you’re a member of Empire Eighty-Eight,”  she told him, meeting his eyes with a hard stare, “or at least, you’ve  got some friends who are.  So here’s what’s going to happen.  You’re  going to either tell me everything the triple-E’s have been up to, or  I’m going to break your arms and legs and then you’re going to tell me everything.”  

Empire Eighty-Eight huh? Since the last time I heard the name, I’ve been informed about the 1488 dogwhistle, which I had never heard in spain. So yeah this guy is definitely part of some neonazi group, and is all around human garbage.

The group seems pretty big if it has a lot of unpowered mooks, kind of reminds me of Lung and his boys. I bet them and these guys wouldn’t really get along.

As she spoke, she ratcheted up her power.  She knew it was working when he started squirming just to avoid her gaze.

“Fuck you, you can’t touch me.  There’s laws against that shit,” he blustered, staring fixedly over one shoulder.

She turned up her power another notch.  Her body thrummed with current – waves of energy that anyone in her presence would experience as an emotional charge of awe and admiration.  For those with a reason to be afraid of her, it would be a feeling of raw intimidation instead.

Oh so she not only has superman-like powers! She also has an intimidation factor! That is fascinating. It makes her enemies afraid and everyone else feel awe at her presence. ...That sounds a little creepy if it influences normal people but I see how it can give a massive advantage against villains and criminals, in conjunction with her other powers!

“Last chance,” she warned him.

Unfortunately, fear affected everyone differently.  For this particular asshole, it just made him dig in his heels and become obstinate.  She could see it in his body language before he opened his mouth – this was the sort of guy who reacted to anything that spooked or unsettled him with an almost mindless refusal to bend.

“Lick my hairy, sweaty balls,” he snarled, before punctuating it with a spat, “Cunt.”

It makes sense that someone like him would get defiant in a moment like this. Still probably not the best judgement. Fear (even this artificial one) is usually there for a reason.

She threw him.  Since she could bench press a cement mixer, though it was hard to balance something so large and unwieldy, even a casual toss on her part could get some good distance.  He flew a good twenty five or thirty yards down the back road before hitting the asphalt, and rolled for another ten.

He was utterly for still for long enough that Victoria had begun to worry that he’d somehow snapped his neck or broken his spine as he’d rolled.  She was relieved when he groaned and began to pull himself to his feet.

Damn, with a power like hers she really has to be careful to not accidentally kill someone. If she can throw a grown healthy adult like that, sending him flying across the street, she could just as easily end anyone who doesn’t have super-endurance.

I wonder if that is actually a problem in this world? Accidental manslaughter via a missuse of super-strength.

“Ready to talk?” she asked him, her voice carrying down the alley.   She didn’t move  forward from where she hovered in the air, but she did let herself drop closer to the ground.

Pressing one hand against his leg to support himself as he straightened up, he raised his other hand and flipped her the bird, then turned and began to limp down the alley.

....what is this guy even doing? She just yeeted your ass to the other side of the street! Since when is pissing dangerous superheroines a good idea??

What was this asshole thinking?  That she would just let him go?  That, what, she would just bend to his witless lack of self preservation?   That she was helpless to do any real harm to him?  To top it off, he was going to insult her and try to walk away?

....he IS probably counting on you being a “good guy”, yeah.

But by the way her internal thoughts are going, he may have made a liiitle mistake with all this.

“Screw you too,” she hissed through her teeth.  Then she kicked the dumpster below her hard enough to send it flying down the little road.   It rotated lazily through the air as it arced towards the retreating figure, the trajectory and rotation barely changing as it knocked him flat.  It skidded to a halt three to five yards beyond him, the metal sides of the dumpster squealing and sparking as it scraped against the asphalt.

...did she just throw an entire dumpster on top of him? Like, as a projectile weapon??  Is this poor asshole still alive???

This time, he didn’t get up.

“Fuck,” she swore, “Fuckity fuck fuck.”  She flew to him and checked for a pulse.  She sighed, and then headed to the nearest street.  She found the street address, grabbed her cell from her belt and dialed.

Oh fuck she might have gone and done it. Used excessive force and super-murdered a suspect. What even happens in cases like this, then?

She seemed to be panicking but then calmed down when she checked for a pulse, so he’s probably still alive, even if knocked out.

It seems to have spooked her enough to make a phone call though.

“Hey sis?  Yeah, I found him.  That’s, uh, sort of the problem.   Yeah.  Look, I’m sorr- ok, can we talk about this later?  Yeah.  I’m at Spayder and Rock, there’s this little road that runs behind the buildings.  Downtownish, yeah.  Yeah?  Thanks.”

Victoria returned to the unconscious skinhead, checked his pulse, and listened intently for changes in his breathing.  It took a very long five minutes for her sister to arrive.

“Again, Victoria?” the voice disturbed her from her contemplations.

She called her sister for help! Does her sister have superpowers too? Maybe some sort of healing or stasis power, so they can avoid him dying, if he’s in a really critical state?

Again, huh? Oof, is excessive force a thing with you Victoria? She might not be as “purely heroic” as I thought. Seeing a lot of gray here as well. Trigger-happy or reckless heroes can be VERY dangerous in certain settings.

“Use my codename, please,” Victoria told the girl.  Her sister was as different from her as night was from day.  Where Victoria was beautiful, tall, gorgeous, blonde, Amy was mousy.  Victoria’s costume showed off her figure, with a white one-piece dress that came to mid-thigh (with shorts underneath) an over-the shoulder cape, high boots and a golden tiara with spikes radiating from it, vaguely reminiscent of the sun’s rays or the statue of liberty.  Amy’s costume, by contrast, was only a shade away from being a burka.  Amy wore a robe with a large hood and a scarf that covered the lower half of her face.  The robe was alabaster white and had a medic’s red cross on the chest and the back.

Oh I like both of their designs a lot! And the contrast between them!

Victoria is a white and gold goddess with statue of liberty and/or divine motifs, which matches up with both her demeanor so far, and the power itself, especially the fear/adoration part.

Amy, on the other hand, reminds me of a final fantasy white mage, so the possibility of her being a healer is even higher (she even wears a red cross!). Also, just by visual design alone, she may be more introverted in comparison to the extroverted nature of her sister. She is like a star radiating light, while Amy is hiding herself with her clothes.

“Our identities are public,” Amy retorted, pushing the hood back and scarf down to reveal brown frizzy hair and a face with freckles spaced evenly across it.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Victoria replied.

“You want to talk about principles, Glory Girl?” Amy asked, in the most sarcastic tone she could manage, “This is the sixth – sixth! – time you’ve nearly killed someone.  That I know about!”

“I’m strong enough to lift a SUV over my head,” Victoria muttered, “It’s hard to hold back all the time.”

Ooh interesting! Ok so a couple of things:

1) Amy looks cute, with her frizzy hair and freckles, in comparison to her sister’s more traditionally “beautiful” look.

2)Their identities are public??. Sooo....is that a thing particular to them, or to a group they belong to?? Cause I don’t remember very well, but I think Armsmaster kept his identity secret, didn’t he??

It’s very interesting that there are superheroes with public identities! I suppose that turns them into celebrities, even in their private lives, but isn’t that dangerous? Aren’t there villains who would attack their homes or families?

3)It seems Glory Girl is indeed a bit sketchy with the way she uses her super-strength, having six close calls with killing someone just because of an excess of force. I wonder if she can learn to regulate just how hard she needs to hit, because that seems dangerous!

“I’m sure Carol would buy that line,” Amy said, making it clear in her tone she wasn’t, “But I know you better than anyone.  If you’re having trouble holding back, the problem isn’t here -” she poked Victoria in the bicep.  “It’s here-” she jabbed her sister in the forehead, hard.  Victoria didn’t even blink.

“Look, can you just fix him?” Victoria pleaded.

“I’m thinking I shouldn’t,” Amy said, quietly.

“What?”

“There’s consequences, Vicky.  If I help you now, what’s going to stop you from doing it again?  I can call the paramedics.  I know some good people from the hospital.  They could probably fix him up alright.”

Seems Amy is fed up with her sister dodging responsabilities for her recklessness, and wants her to learn the consequences of her behaviour and hopefully excercise more caution. This also confirms that Amy is indeed some kind of healer. Also is Carol their mother or caretaker??

Hey, hey, hey,” Victoria said, “That’s not funny.  He goes to the hospital, people ask questions.”

“Yeah, I’m well aware,” Amy said, her voice hushed.

“This isn’t, like, me getting grounded.  I’d get pulled into court on charges of aggravated assault and battery.  That doesn’t just fuck with me.  It fucks with our family, all of New Wave.  Everything we’ve struggled to build.”

On the other hand, facing the consequences could mean that their whole family takes the blame.

New Wave...it seems Amy and Victoria have a whole family of superheroes, like The Incredibles! Is New Wave’s gimmick that the identities are public? The fact that excessive force threatens the founding purpose of the group leads me to think that revealing their identities is an attempt to gain the trust of the general public.

Amy frowned and looked at the fallen man..

“I know you’re not keen on the superhero thing, but you’d really go that far?  You’d do that to us?  To me?”

Amy pointed a finger at her sister, “That’s not me.  It’s not my fault we’re at this point.  It’s you.  You’re crossing the line, going too far.  Which is exactly what people who criticize New Wave are scared of.  We’re not government sponsored.  We’re not protected or organized or regulated in the same way.  Everyone knows who we are under our masks.  That means we have to be accountable.  The responsible thing for me to do, as a member of this team, is to let the paramedics take him, and let the law do as it sees fit.”

So, New Wave is not government sponsored, like the protectorate is!

On one hand, we have the Protectorate, which is a state-funded professional justice league, with secret identities and constumed antics and such.

On the other, we have New Wave, which is a freelance family of heroes with their identities public and emphasizing accountability and probably a more modern, refreshing approach to superheroing (which kinda goes with the new wave name)

I really like the world building we’ve got going on here. It doesn’t seem to be going that well if Victoria here nearly killed a crook due to an excessive use of force though. At least it seems Amy is more level-headed and wants her sis to also be more careful.

Victoria abruptly pulled Amy into a hug.  Amy resisted for a moment, then let her arms go limp at her sides.

“This isn’t just a team, Ames,” Victoria told her, “We’re a family.  We’re your family.”

Heh, what Victoria is pulling here is the exact sort of emotional manipulation that a spoiled family member pulls when trying to get away with something scot-free. They’ve got a sister dinamic, that’s for sure!

The man lying just a matter of feet away stirred, then groaned, long and loud.

“My adoptive family,” Amy mumbled into Victoria’s shoulder, “And stop trying to use your frigging power to make me all squee over how amazing you are.  Doesn’t work.  I’ve been exposed so long I’m immune.”

Oh wow, seems like Victoria was trying literal emotional manipulation by way of her powers, but Amy has been exposed for so long she’s inmmune. So.... one can build an inmmunity to that aspect of her power?

Also it’s a bit disturbing to think of Victoria using her emotional powers to make her family subtly like her more.

And Amy is adopted! She did look very different from Victoria, based on that description we got earlier.

“It hurts,” the man moaned.

“I’m not using my power, dumbass,” Victoria told Amy, letting her go, “I’m hugging my sister.  My awesome, caring and merciful sister.”

The man whined, louder, “I can’t move.  I feel cold.”

Amy frowned at Victoria, “I’ll heal him.  But this is the last time.”

Victoria beamed, “Thank you.”

The bastard deserves it, but it’s kind of funny how nonchalant they are being with his continued pain in the background.

Seems Amy has finally caved-in to her demands and will heal this badly wounded piece of shit. (Victoria totally acts like a spoiled brat who broke a toy during all this, which is a bit terrifying with a power combination like hers)

Amy leaned over the man and touched her hand to his cheek, “Slingshot break to his ribs, fractured clavicle, broken mandible, broken scapula, fractured sternum, bruised lung, broken ulna, broken radius -“

“I get the point,” Victoria said.

“Do you?” Amy asked.  Then she sighed, “I wasn’t even halfway down the list.  This is going to take a little while.  Sit?”

Victoria crossed her legs and assumed a sitting position, floating a half foot above the ground.  Amy just knelt where she was and rested her hand on the man’s cheek.  The tension went out of his body and he relaxed.

Holy shit, Victoria really pummeled him badly! I guess that’s what happens when a superwoman toys like that with a normal human.

Also Amy can analyze and diagnose what a person has wrong in their body with just a touch? And can remove all pain, also with a single touch? On top of some form of healing?

That is ...incredible. She could revolutionize the world of healthcare and be an incredible professional doctor! Just the analysis part of it alone! It’s just ...so good.

“How’s the woman?  Andrea?”

“Better than ever, physically,” Amy replied, “I grew her new teeth, fixed everything from the bruising to the scrapes, and even gave her a head to toe tune-up.  Physically, she’ll feel on top of the world, like she had been to a spa and had the best nutritionist, best fitness expert and the best doctor all looking after her for a straight month.”

This power is astonishingly good.

She (and other powers like hers) would save so many lives, just by doing normal medical work.

Can she only heal injuries like these, or can she also do things like grow half a person’s body back, or even make someone younger? The posibilities with her are endless!

“Good,” Victoria said.

“Mentally?  Emotionally?  It’s up to her to deal with the aftermath of a beating.  I can’t affect the brain.”

“Well-” Victoria started to speak.

“Yeah, yeah.  Not can’t.  Won’t.  It’s complicated and I don’t trust myself not to screw something up when I’m tampering with someone’s head.  That’s it, that’s all.”

Well it seems she couldn’t cure dementia or parkinson’s disease or any of these blights on humankind. But she’s still amazing!

It’s very interesting to see that it’s not just bam, you’re healed, with her power. She has to actually perform the healing herself. So her power would be ...what? Body scan and manipulation? Organic manipulation? Using the inherent healing sistems of the body as a tool?

Victoria started to say something, then shut her mouth.  Even if they weren’t related by blood, they were sisters.  Only sisters could have these sorts of recurring arguments.   They had gone through a dozen different variations on this argument before.  As far as she was concerned, Amy was doing herself a disservice by not practicing using her powers on the brain.  It was only a matter of time before her sister found herself in a situation where she needed to do some emergency brain surgery and found herself incapable.  Amy, for her part, refused to even discuss it.

Victoria has a more reckless demeanor than her sister. It’s true that Amy being able to cure brain diseases would be incredible, but how would she practice? Would there need to be people used as basically experiments until she gets the hang of it? It seems it would require some not very good means.

Also, Amy does use her powers to do medical stuff it seems! That’s good. I wonder how much certain powers have benefitted humankind in this series.

She didn’t want to raise a sensitive issue when Amy was in the process of doing her a major favor.  To change the subject, Victoria asked, “Is it cool if I question him?”

“Might as well,” Amy sighed.

Victoria tapped the man a few times on the forehead to get his attention.  He could barely move his head, but his eyes lolled in her direction.

“Ready to answer my questions, or do me and my sister just walk away and leave you like this?”

“I… sue you, he gasped out, then managed an added, “Whore.”

“Try it.  I’d just love to see a skinhead with a few broken bones go up against a superheroine whose mom just happens to be one of the best lawyers in Brockton Bay.  You know her, right?”

“Brandish,” he said.

Hmm I feel like there is an ethical conversation to be had here. Both in ransoming the healing and in flaunting that they could get away with it because their mom is a lawyer.

Would the Protectorate be ok with doing something like this? Would the citizenship be ok with something like this?

Again, it could be argued that he’s a neonazi scumbag, but what about in more general cases? Or is getting information out of him instrumental in protecting the people and saving lives, and does that justify one’s actions?

Interesting questions to be had, all in all.

“That’s her name in costume.  Normally she’s Carol Dallon.  She’d kick your ass in court, believe me,” Victoria said.  She believed it.  What the thug didn’t understand was that even if he lost the case, the media circus that would be stirred up would do more damage than anything else.  But she didn’t need to inform him of that.  She asked him, “So do I get my sister to leave you as you are, or are you willing to trade some information for relief from months of incredible pain and a lifetime of arthritis and stiffness in your bones?”

So Carol is indeed their mother, and also the superheroine Brandish! ...I don’t have any idea what her powers are based on that name alone.

“And erectile dysfunction,” Amy said, just loud enough for the thug to hear her, “You fractured your ninth vertebra.  That’s going to affect all nerve function in extremities below your waist.  If I leave you like you are, your toes will always feel a little numb, and you’ll have a hell of a time getting it up, if you know what I mean.”

The skinhead’s eyes widened a fraction, “You’re fucking with me.”

“I have an honorary medical license,” Amy told him, her expression solemn, “I’m not allowed to fuck with you about stuff like that.   Hippocratic oath.”

“Isn’t that ‘do no harm’?” the thug asked.  Then he groaned, long, loud and with the slightest rattle in his breath, as she removed her hand from his body.

Okay I’m kinda enjoying the way they are messing with him, ethical questions aside. Amy going straight for the erectile dysfunction! And a version of the “If I was an undercover cop, I would be obligated to tell you” kind of gambit.

Would the removing the anesthetic hand to make him comply be considered torture? Hm.

“That’s just the first part of it, like how freedom of speech and the right to bear arms is just the first part of a very long constitution. It doesn’t look like he’s cooperating, Glory Girl.  Should we go?”

“Fuck!” the man shouted, then winced, tenderly touching his side with one hand, “I’ll tell you.  Please, just… do what you were doing.  Touch me and make the pain go away, put me back together.  Fix me?”

Amy touched him.  He relaxed, and then he started talking.

Looks like they got him to talk! Not so cocky in the end, against these two.

“Empire Eighty-Eight is extending into the Docks on Kaiser’s orders.   Lung’s in custody, and whatever happens, the ABB is weaker than it was. That means there’s territory for grabs, and the Empire sure ain’t making progress downtown.”

Seems like Taylor accidentaly created a power vacuum! Due to Lung no longer being there, the ABB is left much weaker and other gangs are rising up to the occasion.

Kaiser huh? That’s the leader of these neonazis? Named after german emperors, so it really fits.

“Why not?” Victoria asked him.

“This guy, Coil.  Don’t know what his powers are, but he’s got a private army.  Ex-military, all of ’em.  At least fifty, Kaiser said, and every one of ’em has top notch gear.  Their armor’s better than kevlar.  You shoot ’em, they’re back up in a few seconds.  ‘Least when you shoot a pig, you can be pretty sure you broke a few ribs.  But that’s not the fucked up thing.  These guys?  They’ve got these lasers hooked up to the machine guns they carry around.  If they don’t think bullets are doing it, or if they’re after people who are behind cover, they fire off these purple laser beams that can cut through steel.  Tear through any cover you’re standing behind and burn through you too.”

More competition! In the same way that the ABB seems to have an asian theme, and the Empire are neo-nazis, these guys seem to be some sort of paramilitary militia armed to the teeth with high-tech gear, including ...laser weapons?? So these guys are less about superpowers and more about collective strength, tactics and formations? They sound awesome.

Coil makes me think about tesla coils, so maybe some electricity power to go along with the high-tech motif and weird technology?

“Yeah.  I know about him.  His methods get expensive,” Victoria said, “Top of the line soldiers, top of the line gear.”

The thug nodded weakly, “But even with money to burn, he’s fighting us over Downtown territories.  Constant tug of war, neither of us making much headway.  Been going on for months.  So Kaiser thinks we should take the Docks now that the ABB are on the outs, gain some ground somewhere easier.  Don’t know any more than that, as far as his plans.”

Seems this Coil group and the Empire are about equal in power, with the ABB being now weaker but maybe stronger than both of them previously?

“Who else is up to something?  Faultline?”

“The bitch with the freaks in her crew?  She’s a mercenary, different goals.  But maybe.  If she wanted to branch out, now would be the time to do it.  With her rep, she’d even do alright.”

“Then who?  There’s a power vacuum in the docks. ��Kaiser’s declared he wants to seize it, but I’m willing to bet he’s warned you about others making a play.”

Another new player! She’s a mercenary, with a bunch of ...freaks? Are these like mutants, where the powers change their appearance and they are discriminated against? Seems like an interesting group. Faultline.... maybe some earth or earthquake-related power?

The skinhead laughed, then winced, “Are you dense, girl?  Everyone’s going to make a play.  It’s not just the major gangs and teams that are looking for a slice of the pie, there.  It’s everyone.  The Docks are ripe for the taking.  The location’s worth as much money as you’d get downtown.  It’s the go to place if you want to buy black market.  Sex, drugs, violence.  And the locals are already used to paying protection money.  It’s just a matter of changing who they pay to.  The Docks are rich territory, and we’re talking the potential for a full scale fucking war over it.”

He looked up at the blond superheroine and laughed.  Her lips set into a firm line.

Dear god Taylor what have you done? Now we have a full-scale gang war that could spread to the whole district thanks to your actions that day. You certainly caused a big splash!

It kinda reminds me of Doflamingo’s speech in One Piece, where there is a power vacuum that is going to make everyone fight in the near future, only that is much much more high scale than this. Still, what a way to change things.

He continued, “You want to know my guess?  Empire Eighty Eight is going to take the biggest slice of the Docks, because we’re strong enough to. Coil’s going to stick his thumb in just to spite us, ABB is going to hold on to some.  But you’re also going to have a bunch of the little guys trying to take something for themselves.  Über and Leet, Circus, the Undersiders, Squealer, Trainwreck, Stain, others you’ve never heard of?  They’re going to stake out their ground, and one of two things is going to happen.  Either there’s war, in which case civilians get hurt and things get bad for you, or there’s alliances between the various teams and solo villains and shit gets even worse for you.”

Woaah a loot of even more new names! This is worldbuilding, the chapter!

Uber and Leet ...I think they vaguely mentioned them once..? But they apparently were small-fries

Circus is maybe a carnaval or clown-themed villain? Those are always ...fun. I expect a lot of circus gimmicks as their powerset.

The Undersiders are that group of totally innocent teens of which Taylor might or might not be a part of now, and might or might not be planning to eventually betray.

Squealer sounds ...weird. Maybe something animal-based?

Trainwreck maybe summons trains to crash against you. That seems too silly though. (Yukari-approved! )

Stain is obviously from Mha and I don’t know how he jumped to here. On a more serious note, I have no idea what he could be about.

All of these (including our undersiders) seem to be small timers, at least compared to the big three of the ABB, the Empire and the supersoldiers. And also Faultline, which even though she was a mercenary was considered high enough to be counted outside of the smaller ones.

We’re getting to know our underworld landscape here!

He broke into laughter yet again.

“Come on, Panacea,” Victoria said as she stood up, touched ground with her boots and brushed her skirt straight, “We’ve gotten enough.”

“You sure?  I’m not done yet,” Amy told her.

“You fixed the bruises and scrapes, broken bones?”  Everything that could get her in trouble, in other words.

“Yeah, but I didn’t fix everything,” Amy replied.

“Good enough,” Victoria decided.

“Hey!” the skinhead shouted, “The deal was you’d fix me if I talked! Did you fix my cock?”  He tried to struggle to get to his feet, but his legs buckled under him,  “Hey!  I can’t fuckin’ walk!  I’ll fucking sue you!”

Victoria’s expression changed in an instant, and her power flooded out, blindsiding the thug.  For an instant, his eyes were like those of a panicked horse, all whites, rolling around, unfocused.  She grabbed him by the shirt collar, lifted him up and growled into his ear, her voice just above a whisper, “Try it.  My sister just healed you… most of you, with a touch.  Did you ever wonder what else she could do?  Ever think, maybe, she could break you just as easily?  Or change the color of your skin, you racist fuck?  I’ll tell you this, I’m not half as scary as my little sister is.”

Seems the skinhead was still being a pest faking not being cured and Victoria had enough. Damn she can be scary, and that’s aside from the ability to literally make him feel fear. I think part of the scary factor to her is that she could very easily break you and she doesn’t really have that much impulse control. Imagine facing down someone like that and thanks to her power having that fear you feel towards her amplified until she is the worst thing in your world.

And that all pales in comparison to her sister. Oh god I hadn’t considered that application of her power! She has organic manipulation, not healing. Healing is just what she chooses to use her power for! She could unmake you with just her continued touch, or give you any sort of illness or deformity. She has one of the greatest and scariest powers so far.

She let him go.  He collapsed in a heap on the ground.

As the two sisters walked away, Victoria pulled her cell phone out of a pouch on her belt with her free hand.  Turning to Amy, she said, “Thank you.”

“Play safe, Victoria.  I can’t bring people back from the dead, and once you’ve gone that far…”

“I’ll be good.  I’ll be better,” Victoria promised as she dialed with one hand.  She put the phone to her ear, “Hello?  Emergency services?   Requesting special line.  New Wave, Glory Girl.  Incapacitated criminal for you to pick up, no powers.  No, no rush, I can hold.”

Seems this situation concluded with a minor big problem averted. Glory Girl really should be grateful for the free healer she has to get her out of her excessive use of force! They are cleaning nazis from the streets so they aren’t bad or anything, they are the good guys, just a bit too dangerous sometimes!

Looking over her shoulder, Victoria noted the thug, still floundering and half-crawling, “He’s not going to get up?”

“He’ll be numb from the waist down for another three hours.  His left arm will be iffy for about that long, too, so he’s not going to move unless he can drag himself somewhere with just one limb.  He’ll also have numb toes for a good month or so, too,” Amy smiled.

“You didn’t actually…”

“No.  Nothing was broken, and I didn’t screw up anything, beyond a temporary numbness.  But he doesn’t know that.  Fear and doubt will complete the effect, and the suggestion becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.”

“Amy!” Victoria laughed, hugging her sister with one arm, “Weren’t you just saying you weren’t going to mess with people’s heads?”

Heh, I really like Amy. And Victoria too, to a degree. She’s a lil bit spoiled, but I imagine getting such awesome powers at a young age warps your perception of things.

We set up a lot of things this chapter, and it seems our protagonist may have destabilized all of the city with her first night in costume! She’s certainly off to a good start!

[themurphyzone]

Dooferella Ch 2

Summary: Heinz has to read to children at the local library as community service, but things go awry when Heinz uses a Fairy Tale-inator to spice up the story of Cinderella. Unfortunately, something malfunctions and Heinz is transported into a strange fairy tale world! Now Dooferella, he’s stuck with a long list of chores for his parents and goody two shoes brother until a summons from the kingdom’s headquarters arrives….

Ch 2: Make the Fire, Fix the Breakfast, Wash the Dishes, Do the Mopping

“A little clumsy today, are we?”

Heinz groaned, which quickly turned into a cough that made his entire chest ache. That smug, self-assured voice was the absolute last thing he wanted to hear.

“Shut up, Roger. I’ll ask for your opinion when I want it. Which is usually never,” Heinz muttered, folding his arms across his chest petulantly. “Besides, you’re terrible at keeping your fireplace clean. It’s like you let five years of dust build up in there.”

“I believe that would be your duty. My job is to play the gracious host for the social gathering tonight. And I require this manor to be nice and tidy for my esteemed guests. You know how much Mother can’t tolerate filthiness. Now, when you’ve finished with the fireplace, sweep the parlor and dust the bannisters. There are plenty of other areas you’ve neglected for the past few days, but focus on the parlor for now, Dooferella,” Roger continued.

He checked the time with an expensive golden pocket watch, which Heinz rolled his eyes at. Digital watches were a thing now. There was no need to be so pretentiously old-fashioned. While Roger always wore nice suits in public, it was just weird to see him in a fancy green dinner jacket when nobody else was around.

Heinz scowled. “You’re not the boss of me. And my name’s not Dooferella!”

But Roger only raised an annoyingly perfect eyebrow, as if he were just observing a persistent fly. “You spend far too much time tinkering with your silly machines,” he chided. “Your head can only take so much damage.”

Roger clasped his white-gloved hands behind his back and left the room, leaving Heinz alone with a dusty fireplace, broom, and a pile of rags.

“Joke’s on you, Roger!” Heinz called, not caring if Roger heard him or not. “Someday I’m gonna overthrow you and order you around like a lowly servant! See how you like it! And guess what? I can leave whenever I want thanks to…the Fairy Tale-inator!”

He opened the flap of his lab coat, but his fingers brushed against his black turtleneck instead, which was somewhat ragged from the rough winds that had battered him around earlier.

His lab coat was gone. And so was the Fairy Tale-inator.

“Right, I put the Fairy Tale-inator on the chair. Which is back in the library. On the other side of the portal. Curse you, lack of foresight!” Heinz shook his fist in the air out of habit. “And curse the portal too for stealing my lab coat!”

He’d just have to build another Fairy Tale-inator.

“This shouldn’t be too hard. I can build another Fairy Tale-inator and get out of here in half an hour tops!” Heinz exclaimed. “Then actually make it home in time for my scheme. I don’t want Perry the Platypus to turn one of my complaints on his occasional non-punctuality back on me.”

                                                ----------------

Okay, so there was a flaw in his plan.

The Fairy Tale-inator was powered by a combination of batteries and spite.

While Heinz could easily provide the spite, there was a significant lack of batteries in the manor. Also, Roger’s not-so-humble abode seemed impractical to live in. Heinz got lost at least five times on the way to the kitchen, then broke an expensive Ming Dynasty vase when he tried to retrace his steps. He swept the broken pieces under a lush Persian rug and convinced himself that Roger probably had a ton of fancy vases and wouldn’t notice if he was down a fancy knickknack or two.

Heinz turned left on another long corridor, balling his fists when he came face to face with a painting of Roger playing kickball.

“Sure, he gets recognition for a sport nobody except Mother cares about, and I get nothing for cup stacking,” Heinz scowled. “There’s more practical applications for cup stacking than kickball. I can’t think of any right now, but I’m sure there’s something!”

As he walked down a flight of stairs, he smelled something delicious and rich, with just a hint of cinnamon and rosemary. His stomach rumbled.

“Alright, just a quick hunger detour,” Heinz conceded. “Then I’ll look for batteries. And possibly find a phone. Cause I don’t have my cell anymore. I’m cursing you a second time, portal!”

The kitchen was full of servants, each of them meticulously preparing various food dishes that Heinz didn’t recognize. He was pretty sure each dish would have some weird French name he’d never be able to pronounce.

Heinz reached for one of the pastries on a large platter, but something hard and flat smacked the back of his hand.

“That hurts!” Heinz protested, cradling his stinging hand against his body.

“Exactly why I did it,” the maid raised the spatula again. “If you hadn’t skipped lunch to work on another ridiculous doohickey, you would actually be focused on cleaning the parlor like Lord Roger ordered and not on causing trouble.”

“Lord Roger? What, being universally admired isn’t good enough for him anymore? Now he’s gotta be worshipped too?” Heinz complained.

The maid rolled her eyes. “I don’t like this job any more than you. I’m just the one who keeps everything organized so the other maids can have a place of employment and the socialites can flirt with the world’s handsomest bachelor at dinner parties.”

Given how the other maids were giggling over their handsome employer, Heinz was just glad he found the only other sane person in this stupid manor.

Besides, if Roger was so rich, he should at least give them better uniforms.

Like a lab coat, for instance.

“And no, none of us worship Lord Roger. It’s just a title. I can’t speak for the socialites though,” the maid shrugged. “Let me guess. You hit your head and need a brief refresher on stuff again.”

“Why does everyone think I hit my head?” Heinz scowled. “I’ve been concussion-free for the past month!”

The smell of the pastries was too delicious to resist, and Heinz reached for the platter again.

This time, the maid just sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. You can have two, on the condition that you clean the parlor afterwards. The dinner party starts at seven tonight, so make sure it’s done by then.”

Heinz snagged two pastries, which flaked in his hand as he bit down on them. He had to hand it to Roger. He definitely knew how to hire good cooks.

“I can do that,” Heinz agreed. “You got a phone? I gotta order some batteries for my Fairy Tale-inator because I couldn’t find any in this house. What’s up with that? Batteries are a lifesaver. It’s like you’re living in medieval Drusselstein! Though there really isn’t much of a difference between medieval and modern Drusselstein, since they’ve both never had the wonders of indoor plumbing. If I have time maybe I could rig up some Sweep-inator or Featherduster-inator up and have the parlor clean in a jiffy.”

“Okay, now you’re just making words up,” the maid sighed. “No idea what a phone is and I don’t really care.”

“You know, a phone! That thing you use to call people so you’re not an antisocial shut-in! It’s got a bunch of buttons with numbers?”

Heinz would’ve pulled out his own cell phone as a reference, but the jerk portal had stolen it too.

“Melanie, I’m almost done with the roast beef!” one of the maids shouted, grunting as she hefted a large pot onto the counter. “Leave the weirdo alone so you can make sure this can satisfy Lord Roger’s taste!”

“Alright, you’ve had your food,” Melanie snapped as she pushed him out of the kitchen. Heinz grabbed a muffin from a nearby counter, shoving it into his mouth before Melanie could force him to put it down. “Get to the parlor and let the rest of us work in peace.”

“Funny how your name is Melanie, cause Roger’s got a secretary with a name like yours. Though maybe it was Melody or Mariana in her case. I know it started with ‘M’,” Heinz said, his words somewhat garbled by the crumbs in his mouth.

Melanie shoved a broom into his hands and forcefully pointed upstairs, tapping the spatula against her thigh as if itching for an excuse to use it.

Heinz scurried back to the parlor, not wanting to be on the receiving end of Melanie’s spatula for a second time.

                                                       ----------

Half an hour later, Heinz developed a burning hatred for mahogany. The mantle was mahogany. The upholstery was mahogany. The bannisters were mahogany.

Everything seemed to be made of the luxurious, expensive wood.

Heinz sneezed as he wiped a thin layer of dust off a couch leg. “This isn’t gonna be good for my allergies,” he muttered. “Not to mention, Roger totally lied. I don’t know why he was saying this place was neglected. Looks fine to me. But I guess that’s the nice thing about being the boss. Make your underlings perform menial tasks. When I’m ruler of the Tri-State Area, I’m going to make Roger dust the inator room. Which is going to be huge. Probably gonna need another wing on City Hall for that.”

The repetitive work of dusting, polishing, and waxing the wood wouldn’t be as bad with the appropriate soundtrack. But since he couldn’t get cell service in this place to contact the Danville Chorus Girl Union, he’d just have to provide his own music.

Good thing he knew the Love Handel Reunion Album with Special Thanks to the Flynn-Fletcher Family by heart. The title was a bit long, but hey, it was the best album they put out since Albuquerque ’83.

He mopped the floor to the tune of You Snuck Your Way Right Into My Heart, making a mental note to hire the band for another musical number within a flashback. They did a good job with it the first time around, not even complaining about the copyright infringement.

Just as he finished the second verse, heavy footsteps thundered on the staircase, accompanied by loud barking.

Heinz knew that cold, unfeeling stomp, even if he hadn’t heard it since his teenage years.

He fumbled with the mop handle he’d been using as a microphone, his knuckles turning chalk-white from his tight grip. He could almost pretend that the mop handle would prevent his heart from leaping out of his throat.

Heinz was aware that he was just moving the mop in small, repetitive circles and not getting any actual cleaning done, but the motion prevented him from looking at the staircase.

It was bad enough that he was stuck as Roger’s servant, and now his father had to be here too.

This would definitely set him back on the whole ‘make my family respect me’ thing.

A small nose poked around the corner of a fancy cabinet, and a small mouse crawled away from its hiding spot, stopping occasionally to scent the air.

Then a dog growled, which sent the entire pack into a chorus of excited barking. The mouse scampered back to the cabinet.

For a brief moment, Heinz heard the scrabble of paws on the freshly mopped tile, then a white blur slammed into the bucket, splashing soap and water all over the floor and couch. The rest of the dogs gathered around the cabinet, sniffing around the empty space between the wood and floor and barking at the mouse as if that would somehow lure it out of hiding.

The entire pack of dogs were large, white spitzenhounds that looked exactly like Only Son.

“Whoa, how many games of Poke the Goozim with a Stick did you have to play to get all those dogs?” Heinz asked before he could stop himself.

“HALT!” Father roared.

Heinz stiffened, the mop falling to the floor with an echoing clatter. The dogs whined and curled their tails between their legs, slinking back to Father with their heads down. While the command didn’t seem directed at him, he still instinctively snapped upright into a militaristic stance, unable to control his body’s reaction from that primal fear of harsh punishment.

Father’s hair and beard were white from advanced age, but it didn’t relieve Heinz’s fear of his wrath. Father jabbed a bony finger into Heinz’s chest.

Heinz didn’t make eye contact. It would only make him angrier.

“Get rid of him, Dooferella,” Father pointed to the soaking wet dog that had knocked over the bucket. The wet dog nosed Father’s hand, but that only earned him a harsh slap to the nose.

The rest of the dogs gathered around Father as he marched out of the room, leaving a trail of muddy bootprints behind him.

“Disappointment,” Father sneered, the word echoing off the high walls. Roger’s manor had some really good acoustics.

Heinz wasn’t sure if the word was being directed at him or the dog.

A mess of muddy footprints, soap, and grimy water stained the parlor, erasing all of Heinz’s progress. The couch cushions were discolored, and the water and mud mixed to create an unsightly brown puddle.

So this is what Cinderella must’ve felt like.

It wasn’t a good feeling either.

[subject004]

[  dylan  wang  ·  cismale  ·  he/him  ·  19  ]  ❝  hey  !!  did  you  see  four  /  jian  liu  walking  into  the  woods  ??  i’ve  heard  they’ve  been  described  as  well-meaning  by  their  close  friends  .  but  ,  i’ve  also  heard  that  they’ve  been  described  as  pretty  enigmatic  by  others  .  if  there  were  three  things  that  could  describe  them  ,  it  would  be  blood  dripping  into  murky  water  ,  lovecraftian  horror  ,  and  chugging  coffee  at  odd  hours  of  the  night  .  here’s  to  hoping  they  don’t  get  trapped  in  the  upside  down  !!  ❞

hi  i’m  bailey  and  i’m  a  literal  snail  .  welcome  to  my  dumb  intro  !

cw  :  kidnapping  ,  human  testing  ??  you  know  ,  hawkins  lab  usual  .  also  ,  pretty  long  because  idk  how  to  stop  rambling  .

the  night  of  may  14th  ,  1966  ,  two  members  of  the  CPC  welcomed  their  first  child  .  the  couple  tried  and  tried  for  years  ,  and  were  finally  given  their  long  awaited  little  boy  :  LIU  JIAN  .  he  quickly  became  the  light  of  their  lives  .  however  in  just  three  years  ,  that  light  would  be  ripped  away  from  them  .

he  was  taken  to  america  —  a  small  town  where  no  one  would  suspect  ,  a  small  town  harboring  a  secret  .  hawkins  ,  indiana  .  he  was  terrified  ,  confused  ,  and  wouldn’t  stop  crying  until  they  eventually  sedated  him  .  there  were  whispers  ,  rumors  ,  about  a  small  child  in  china  with  possible  ...  gifts  ,  and  naturally  within  their  previous  (  and  ongoing  )  tests  ,  they  needed  to  see  for  themselves  .  and  they  couldn’t  let  the  communists  have  this  ,  if  it  was  true  .

it  was  .

NUMBER  FOUR  ,  they  assigned  him  .  he  was  no  longer  jian  ,  no  longer  a  simple  child  .  through  grueling  experiments  ,  pushing  him  past  exhaustion  on  multiple  occasions  ,  they  found  he’s  gifted  with  TELEPATHY  .  at  first  it  was  hard  to  understand  in  translation  of  a  child  who  didn’t  speak  english  ,  but  the  more  they  practiced  ,  it  became  more  apparent  when  focused  .

four  was  subsequently  taught  english  in  the  lab  as  he  aged  ,  because  while  translators  were  available  ,  it  was  “  easier  for  them  all  ”  if  he  learned  .  they  were  correct  in  that  ,  but  it  didn’t  make  the  real  situation  any  better  .

whatever  memories  of  his  parents  he  had  were  slowly  but  surely  leaving  .  whatever  memories  of  a  short  lived  childhood  he  had  were  gone  .

at  the  age  of  eight  ,  they  unlocked  a  new  ability  —  PAIN  INDUCEMENT  —  a  sub-power  of  mental  manipulation  ,  stemming  from  his  telepathy  .  two  of  the  scientists  at  the  lab  had  the  misfortune  of  experiencing  it  firsthand  as  it  began  to  manifest  from  finding  himself  in  a  position  of  danger  ,  since  it  was  during  a  time  he  wasn’t  behaving  as  he  was  expected  to  .

they  decided  to  experiment  even  more  ,  of  course  :  the  limitations  and  circumstances  of  this  newly  developed  ability  .  as  it  would  turn  out  ,  four  can  only  access  pain  inducement  when  he’s  angry  /  feeling  threatened  ,  presumably  as  a  result  of  fight  or  flight  instincts  .

he  didn’t  have  much  contact  with  the  other  children  ,  other  than  intervals  spent  in  the  rainbow  room  ,  and  as  he  grew  older  and  more  distant  he  didn’t  care  .  soon  enough  ,  he  stopped  playing  and  speaking  to  the  others  even  when  they  were  given  that  small  time  .  he  kept  to  himself  ,  drawing  in  a  corner  .  he  liked  art  .  his  drawings  would  often  consist  of  grotesque  monsters  ;  dark  and  wildly  scribbled  ,  as  if  he  was  in  a  rush  to  get  down  what  he  envisioned  .

while  time  went  on  ,  more  and  more  children  escaped  the  lab  ,  leaving  four  one  of  the  last  remaining  .  it  wasn’t  that  four  didn’t  want  his  freedom  ,  to  have  more  than  this  life  of  being  an  experiment  ,  it  was  that  he  was  kind  of  scared  of  it  ?  it  was  an  overwhelming  thought  ,  no  matter  how  curious  he  was  of  the  outside  world  ...

after  eleven’s  monster  encounter  and  gate  opening  situation  ,  four  felt  ...  anxious  .  he  didn’t  know  how  to  describe  it  other  than  feeling  sick  ,  but  not  actually  being  sick  .  so  he  never  tried  ,  knowing  it  would  sound  even  more  ridiculous  .  instead  ,  he  once  again  turned  to  drawing  ,  using  the  creative  outlet  as  a  way  to  express  himself  and  make  up  for  what  his  words  lacked  .  however  ,  it  only  got  worse  when  the  monster  escaped  and  lab  investigations  of  the  newly  quarantined  area  began  .

in  a  well-timed  space  after  the  chaos  ,  he  disobeyed  the  order  of  staying  away  and  found  himself  on  an  adventure  down  into  the  madness  .  just  to  see  what  was  causing  all  of  this  ,  you  know  ?  just  one  glance  .  it  was  almost  too  easy  to  slip  past  any  form  of  security  ,  but  it  was  a  rush  of  adrenaline  that  he  never  thought  he  could  enjoy  .

the  next  day  he  began  drawing  the  gate  ,  trying  to  imitate  the  look  of  it  with  the  few  supplies  he  had  around  .  it  wasn’t  exact  enough  to  sound  off  too  many  alarms  in  the  scientists  that  saw  ,  but  it  was  enough  to  question  if  eleven  wasn’t  the  only  one  who  could  contact  the  other  dimensional  creature  .  for  a  few  days  ,  they  forced  him  to  try  and  contact  the  monster  .  they  wanted  to  see  if  four  could  reach  out  to  it  telepathically  ,  to  try  and  lure  it  back  —  for  a  little  while  ,  it  seemed  like  there  was  potential  ,  but  in  the  end  whatever  close  calls  they  got  were  simply  just  that  .

alright  so  ..  i  would  say  ..  some  time  after  the  events  of  season  1  and  like  mid  season  2  ,  four  finally  escaped  and  fled  deep  into  the  woods  .  with  everything  going  on  and  with  him  already  being  silent  and  withdrawn  ,  it  wouldn’t  have  been  too  shocking  if  nobody  really  noticed  him  at  first  ??  like  he’s  pretty  hard  to  miss  ,  standing  at  6ft  and  looking  ...  like  he  very  obviously  shouldn’t  be  there  ,  but  .  you  know  ,  circumstantial  .

at  some  point  he  was  taking  shelter  in  someone’s  shed  ,  because  he  was  cold  but  he  was  also  still  cold  and  it  didn’t  exactly  help  much  but  it  was  better  than  being  totally  exposed  .  in  order  to  get  warmer  clothes  /  food  ,  though  ,  four  did  use  his  telepathy  in  order  to  make  people  want  to  give  him  stuff  .  or  to  get  out  of  some  type  of  trouble  ??  like  power  of  suggestion  and  things  like  that  ,  basically  .

fast  forward  to  currently  ,  he’s  still  basically  lurking  in  the  woods  by  himself  ,  but  he  did  find  this  nice  older  woman  that  let  him  stay  in  her  guest  room  occasionally  before  she  passed  .  now  he  just  ???  kinda  chills  around  it  ,  but  also  has  started  venturing  out  into  town  ...  only  to  be  ,  admittedly  ,  slightly  overwhelmed  by  the  new  starcourt  mall  .

so  personality  wise  :  he’s  really  ...  i  wouldn’t  say  shy  ,  but  rather  ..  secretive  and  hard  to  read  for  the  most  part  .  doesn’t  know  proper  ways  to  express  himself  .  also  doesn’t  mean  to  seem  cold  or  aloof  though  !!  like  genuinely  he’s  a  nice  kid  and  his  intentions  are  for  the  most  part  good  ,  but  he  definitely  goes  about  things  the  wrong  way  ?  i  would  describe  him  as  a  chaotic  good  ravenclaw  ,  at  best  .

his  astrology  is  taurus  sun  ,  pisces  moon  ,  sagittarius  rising  meaning  he’s  particularly  creative  and  likes  to  have  an  outlet  to  express  himself  .  he  doesn’t  like  rushing  into  things  ,  but  that  doesn’t  necessarily  stop  any  impulses  from  taking  over  here  and  there  .  the  trio  of  signs  are  as  complimentary  as  they  are  contradictory  ,  and  i  think  it  captures  him  as  a  person  so  far  :  curious  but  reserved  ,  withdrawn  but  wanting  to  experience  life  in  a  new  way  .

if  he’s  ever  exposed  to  d&d  ,  he  would  probably  be  a  rogue  .

at  the  lab  ,  some  of  the  scientists  probably  started  calling  him  “  monster  boy  ”  as  a  not  actually  funny  joke  ,  because  monsters  were  pretty  much  the  sole  content  of  his  drawings  .  idk  he’s  very  innately  into  horror  stuff  ,  which  is  almost  ironic  .

in  terms  of  sexuality  ,  he’s  technically  demi  biromantic  /  demi  bisexual  ,  meaning  he  needs  a  solid  bond  before  even  potentially  thinking  about  that  sort  of  ish  .  but  also  because  he  has  absolutely  no  experience  with  it  whatsoever  ,  he’s  painfully  oblivious  to  it  in  all  forms  and  has  no  idea  lmao

uh  ..  he  still  goes  by  four  ,  mostly  .  he  vaguely  remembered  his  birth  name  but  will  only  use  it  if  he  absolutely  has  to  ??  it’s  still  a  really  foreign  concept  to  him  that  he  technically  has  a  name  and  not  just  a  number  ?  he’s  sort  of  self  conscious  about  said  name  though  ,  because  people  who  do  know  it  have  mispronounced  it  at  some  point  or  another  ,  i’m  sure  .  so  either  he  goes  by  the  usual  four  ...  or  maybe  a  simple  ‘  ji  ’

somehow  has  gained  an  addiction  to  coffee  ,  and  he  (  obviously  )  also  doesn’t  know  what  his  favorite  ice  cream  flavor  is  ,  that’s  possibly  gonna  be  a  bit  of  fun  to  figure  out  ,  maybe  !

[even-more-crescents-blog]

Fight or Flight

fandom: Gravity Falls

word count: 2.317

characters: Dipper x2 (grownup AU versions), Evil!Stan (belongs to @ahkaraii), Bill

relationships: Dipper selfcest, Evil!Stan / Dipper, past Ford / Dipper

summary: While those around him would maybe prefer to have escaped their past by not being mentally present throughout it, this Dipper’s experiences of being nothing but an empty shell during the most traumatizing events of his life have left him desperately envious, wondering, struggling for agency, for personhood.

warning: internalized victim-blaming, past child abuse, blood, gore, assault, sexual assault

“What were you wearing”, Dipper repeats, his eyes fixed to the ceiling above them. An intoxicating rush of numbness overcomes him.

“When I accepted the apprenticeship?”, Tyrone asks, obviously trying to ignore where this is going.

No dice. “When he fucked you.”

If Dipper had a dollar for every Mason trying to escape their Ford throughout the multiverse and looking for his help in this endeavour, he’d have… about five dollar by now. Which isn’t much. But it’s something, he tells himself, breathing heavily, his head resting on the naked thigh of his newest acquaintance, Tyrone.

Tyrone is a pretty peculiar Dipper indeed. He likes neither of the two names Dippers usually go by. He also isn’t a mess like most other Dippers stranded between the dimensions, quite the opposite. Tyrone might very well be the most composed version of himself Dipper has ever seen. He’s well-groomed, his toned arms speak of weekly work-outs, and then there’s the polo and the penny loafers. Sometimes Dipper wonders whether this really is a version of himself at all.

Right now Tyrone is not wearing either though, or much else for that matter.

They’ve been doing this a lot lately, and Dipper is not entirely sure what Tyrone is getting out of it. Surely he could do better than a grubby alternate self. But Dipper sure as fuck isn’t complaining. Tyrone is good company, and as if being ridiculously handsome wasn’t already enough, he’s also witty and charming.

Dipper reaches over his head to touch the abs he still can’t believe any Mason throughout the galaxy has actually managed to obtain. There’s something filthy slithering through Dipper’s stomach. Just as filthy as himself.

“So”, Dipper says, and he knows he should stop talking the moment he opens his mouth. “You accepted his idiotic apprenticeship too?”

Tyrone doesn’t answer at first. It’s been barely a week ago that Dipper has blasted a hole through his Ford’s skull (and ignored his other request). Tyrone preferred not to see the body.

“I suppose”, he says eventually and shifts a bit. He obviously doesn’t want to talk about it.

Dipper couldn’t care less. It’s hard to imagine a thirteen years old Tyrone. Did he look exactly like every other Dipper? Like himself? Or did he already have a hint of the fine, grown up features that seem to be completely absent from Dipper’s own face?

“What do you think he wanted from you?”, Dipper asks before he can keep himself from it.

“Fuck if I know”, Tyrone spits out under his breath. “I don’t think it was about me. I think he just wanted anyone who would go along with whatever he said. And when I became too inconvenient for him… he left.”

There’s a short moment of silence. “What were you wearing”, Dipper murmurs, barely audible.

Tyrone stiffens underneath him. “What?”

There are strangely lucid impressions of Stanford and a different version of his thirteen years old self flashing before Dipper’s eyes, like right out of an ancient Greek tale - the boy’s face mature beyond his years, lips and legs parted invitingly, his moans soft, his deep breathing even as Ford grabs him and scratches and bites and tears bloody pieces out of him. No panic, only serene acceptance, and Ford wants him so much it makes Dipper’s insides churn.

“What were you wearing”, Dipper repeats, his eyes fixed to the ceiling above them. An intoxicating rush of numbness overcomes him.

“When I accepted the apprenticeship?”, Tyrone asks, obviously trying to ignore where this is going.

No dice. “When he fucked you.”

Dipper can feel every muscle in Tyrone’s body tensing up. “Excuse me?”

His chest hurts as he sits up and grabs Tyrone’s wrists, right as the other was about to try and move away. No work-out in the world holds up against a body infused with the powers of a demi-god, and so Tyrone struggles in vain against Dipper’s grip, still astonishingly calm, everything considered.

“What did it feel like”, Dipper breathes into Tyrone’s ear, and he needs to know so badly it almost strangles him.

That apparently does it for Tyrone. He manages to free one hand from Dipper’s vice grip and punches him in the ear, quick and hard.

A flash of pain and a sudden ringing noise make Dipper flinch back. He rips both his hands up to his ear with a yelp. That’s all the chance Tyrone needs. He shoves Dipper on his back, and now the tables have turned and Dipper is the one being held down.

“You tell me, what DID it feel like?”, Tyrone hisses between bared teeth, all the admirable poise drained from his face.

“I don’t know!”, Dipper whispers desperately. His entire body breaks into cold sweat. He could fight back, but he feels paralyzed. Insignificant.

“What were YOU wearing, huh?”, Tyrone barks.

“I don’t know!”, Dipper cries out, icy shivers running up and down his back. “I wasn’t there!”

For a moment, Tyrone’s grip loosens. His eyes are wide. Now he almost does look like a child. He doesn’t seem to understand, but he doesn’t need to. A cold snort escapes him. “Wish I hadn’t been there.”

The filthy, slithering thing in Dipper’s stomach is back, and it’s bubbling up searing hot. He’s on Tyrone before he knows it, hands tightly wrapped around Tyrone’s neck, wringing until even the chokes and gargled noises subside. “You… fucking... bastards!”, Dipper manages to get out between frantically drawn breaths while Tyrone claws at his hands. Their skin has gotten so hot it’s impossible to hold onto them, let alone tear them away. “None of you! None of you deserve it!”

-

His mind must’ve gone dark for a moment. Dipper doesn’t know when he’s let go of Tyrone, but the other is up and dressed now, burn marks all around his neck. How he even manages to stand up straight is a mystery to Dipper. Every mortal being should be half dead.

“You are the worst fucking Dipper”, Tyrone gasps, trying to adjust his collar around the fleshy, glistening burned skin covering his neck.

“Tyrone”, Dipper says halfheartedly, and Tyrone stops just before the door. He waits a moment. When nothing happens, he croaks: “Stop fucking with yourself”, and leaves.

Dipper laughs. At least he thinks that’s what he’s doing.

-

Stan halts so quickly, Dipper immediately knows he’s done something wrong. His sex-addled mind struggles to remember. The heavy scent of sweat and Stan’s body is strong in his nose, making it even harder to think. His head is spinning and every inch of his skin is tingling. He’s been hyperventilating again. He wraps his legs even harder around Stan’s back. He shifts and moans, and then it hits him.

“Ford”, is what he’s just said. It feels like Dipper’s stomach turns.

Slowly, he opens his eyes and looks up at Stan.

There’s something cold in Stan’s gaze, and also Dipper feels like throwing up. He doesn’t get the chance though, as he can practically see behind Stan’s forehead, and the thoughts that have just come to an abrupt halt there can’t be pretty.

Suddenly, he grabs Dipper by the hips and flings him onto his belly like a rag doll. The movement is enough to make Dipper hurl. He tries to prop himself up on his elbows, but Stan seizes him by the hair and pushes his face right into the vomit.

The cutting stench fills Dipper’s lungs and he needs to get away, needs to push himself upward, but his hands slip on the wet sheets and Stan is holding him down with an iron grip.

“That what you want”, Stan growls as he enters Dipper from behind. Stan fucks hard even when he isn’t livid, and right at this moment he is blind with rage. Dipper feels like his spine is going to crack every second now as he’s being held down with one big, coarse hand dug deep into his hair and the other pressing down between his shoulder blades, his ass bent upwards in what has got to be a perfect 90° angle, and Stan violently plowing into him with all the mercy and forgiveness of a steam hammer.

Dipper’s probably screaming, he doesn’t know, he can’t hear himself anymore, his vision goes white, but still he can hear Stan’s words.

“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it. To be his little boy toy.”

Out of all the gifts that Bill has given him, Dipper appreciates none more than the side-effect of his pyrokinesis. He has no control over when it kicks in, it seems to be a decision solely reserved for his body and his body alone. In a matter of seconds, his skin is hot like a branding iron. Stan gives a furious grunt as he jerks away. Dipper throws one hand back, finding Stan’s arm and biting into it with one of the teeth rimmed mouths in his palm. This gives him enough room to turn around and punch Stan square in the jaw. A mistake, as it turns out, since Stan’s jaw is about as massive as a shark’s.

Stan rubs the bruise while his mouth slowly contorts into a grin. “Feisty. I like it.” He lunges forward and digs his sharp teeth into the soft part between Dipper’s shoulder and neck, drawing a scream from Dipper. In turn, Dipper buries his fanged palms into the back of Stan’s neck and upper arm.

They scratch and bite each other like animals, all teeth and claws and growls. While Stan may have the upper hand when it comes to physical strength, Dipper’s searing hot skin and complete lack of consideration for his own safety make him a force to be reckoned with. It takes until Stan finally gets an angle on him and rips open the skin over his chest with a greedy bite that he manages to overwhelm Dipper. He spits the torn out piece of flesh into Dipper’s face and shoves one hand between his legs, making Dipper try and squirm away.

“That’s what I thought”, Stan grunts as he finds Dipper hot and dripping wet. He holds Dipper down and rubs him painfully hard a couple of times, making Dipper mewl and bite back tears, pulls up his fingers again and smears them over Dipper’s mouth.

As if the dingy mattress itself has suddenly become scorching hot, Stan pushes himself off the dirty thing and gets up.

“Yeah, you better fuck off before I burn you to a crisp!”, Dipper snarls, but it’s an empty threat, his legs trembling and his battered and bruised body barely being able to move on its own volition.

Without a further word, Stan leaves Dipper behind, picking at the bite wounds Dipper’s various mouths have left all over his body.

-

“OH BOYS”, Bill says later while helping Dipper regenerate the skin over his rib cage. Bill is floating above Dipper, his numerous tiny black hands leaving impossibly light touches wherever they go. He ignores the dried trails of various bodily fluids on Dipper’s face, and Dipper is thankful for it.

Stan is still gone, who knows were.

“CAN’T LEAVE YOU ALONE FOR TWO MINUTES.”

“I’m not the worst fucking Dipper”, he murmurs defiantly and leans into Bill’s touch.

“NOOOO, NO NO NO NO. YOU’RE MY FAVORITE DIPPER!” 

“Yeah, cuz I’m the only Dipper who puts up with you.”

“HERE I AM, HEALING YOUR WOUNDS, AND THIS IS THE THANKS I GET?” Bill lays one miniature finger over Dipper’s lips. “COME ON, GIVE YOURSELF SOME CREDIT. YOU’RE NOT JUST EXERTING PETTY REVENGE HERE OR SOMETHING BANAL LIKE THAT. KILLING ALL THESE FORDSIES, YOU’RE SAVING ALL THEIR LITTLE PINE TREES!”

Dipper stays quiet for a while. “That’s right. Even the Fords who haven’t come across their Dipper yet... they will never get to meet them.”

“AND HONESTLY NOW. PIRAÑA PANTS HAS GOT SOME NERVE JUDGING YOU. BOY TOY, HAHA! LOOK WHO’S TALKING.”

Dipper lifts his head reluctantly.

“BIG GUY’S GOT BIG ISSUES.” That seems to be all that Bill is willing to say about that. “THOUGH TO BE FAIR, YOU GAVE HIM THE PERMISSION TO DO WHATEVER HE WANTS WITH YOU.”

Dipper makes a noncommittal noise.

On a whim, Bill suddenly digs long black claws into the not entirely healed skin on Dipper’s shoulder, making him wince. “I GET IT”, he says and his eye curls into a smirk. “YOU’RE LIKE ME! YOU’D RATHER HAVE THE PAIN THAN ALL THAT OTHER BORING STUFF.”

Dipper bats his little hands away.

“KID, I DON’T CARE. YOU DO YOU. JUST BE CAREFUL YOU DON’T KICK THE BUCKET. AGAIN. I GOT OTHER THINGS TO DO THAN DEAL WITH ALL YOUR BOO-BOOS.”

Bill vanishes with a laugh and a comical plop.

-

A couple days later Bill gives them a target, leaving it for them to decide whether they want to go after it as a team. It’s the same evening that Stan pulls up in front of Dipper’s hideout, an abandoned intergalactic gas station.

“I was just gonna hit the bar”, Stan says without looking up, as Dipper steps outside and holds up a hand to keep the setting suns from blinding him.

Dipper leans against the eye strainingly multi-colored convertible truck, courtesy of their boss. “Look, I’m sorry”, he says. He doesn’t really know what he’s apologizing for, but he’d rather just forget about all of this.

“I don’t want your fucking sorry”, Stan says, still without looking at him, and takes a deep drag from his cigar.

Dipper huffs and leans into the car a bit further. “Alright then I’m not sorry. And also fuck you.”

Stan grins and finally peeks up at Dipper over the rim of his aviators. “That’s more like it.”

“Fuck you and your shitty attitude towards me. Always hated that about every incarnation of you I met.” Dipper sighs and reaches under his cap to scratch the back of his head as he notices that… is there something approving about the way Stan looks at him? The rage recedes as quickly as it boiled up. “Whatever. Let’s just get smashed.”

“Sounds like a plan”, Stan says and hands him the cigar.

[poststhatmakemefeel]

People pleasing and the "fawn" response

(I saw this go by on Facebook, and it was surprising how much it resonated. I'm copying it from ThreadReader, which got it from Twitter, where it was originally written by Sam Dylan Finch. Complete text below the cut. )

I want to share what has been, in the last year or so, one of the most important things I've realized about my own trauma history — something that has been massively important for my own healing.

Let's talk about the link between people-pleasers and emotional abuse. 🧵

Confession: I am a people-pleaser.

It took me a long time to realize this, though. Because I'm opinionated! And I speak my mind! I'm an "open book" about a lot of what I've been through. Clearly I don't care what people think... right?

But people-pleasing is a lot more complex than that. It's actually part of a trauma response. Most people know about fight, flight, and freeze — but another response, "fawn," is at the core of what people-pleasing is actually about.

To avoid conflict, negative emotions, and retraumatization, people who "fawn" when triggered will go out of their way to mirror someone's opinions and appease them in order to deescalate situations (or potential issues).

For me, this meant that the more invested I was in an emotional connection, the less likely I was to criticize that person, vocalize when my boundaries were crossed, express unhappiness with their behavior, or share anything that I felt might damage that relationship.

This could come across as being excessively nice and complimentary, overly-concerned with another person's happiness, and waiting for cues in conversation to determine if something was "safe" to share or disclose. People-pleasers are often considered "emotional chameleons."

People-pleasers are often really warm, encouraging, and generous people. They tend to overextend themselves and say "yes" to everything and everyone, eager to make those they care about happy and comfortable.

They often grow up in very controlling and chaotic environments, and internalized the idea that if they were perfectly good or well-behaved, they could minimize conflict and secure love and attachment.

And.

When you have this tendency to defer, make yourself subordinate, try to become smaller, ignore your boundaries and intuition, and minimize your own needs... you are profoundly vulnerable to emotional abuse.

When you are excessively concerned with pleasing others, you learn that in order to be effective at this, you have to shut down your gut instincts, your values, your emotions — bc being an individual, rather than a mirror, doesn't serve you in securing the love that you want.

People-pleasers can become drawn to abusive relationships, and repelled from relationships that are abundantly loving — because love has to feel "earned" in order to feel secure. In other words? If love is given too freely or easily, it doesn't feel safe.

This means people-pleasers can be drawn to relationships that are controlling (they feel safest when they defer to others), emotionally-withholding (they are driven by the need to "secure" affection/elated when they do), and even abusive (their lack of boundaries is exploited).

Another part of being vulnerable to abuse is that people-pleasers are so easily gaslit, because when they are inclined to suppress their own instincts, values, and beliefs, they're infinitely more likely to defer to an abuser's version of events or narrative.

This also means that "fawn" types often go through cycles of restricting emotionally (I can't be "too much" for others) & then purging emotionally ("unloading" onto a trusted person bc the expectation to be perfect gets to be too much).

(I think this is why so many of us have eating disorders — just an anecdotal observation, but I digress...)

People-pleasers (the "fawn" trauma response) isn't intended to manipulate others and it's not meant to be dishonest. Every single person presents a version of themselves to others. This merely describes how trauma informs that presentation on an often unconscious level.

The "fawn" response is driven by fear, not a hidden agenda. The "fawn" type is less about manipulation, because it's not being used to *overpower* someone. Instead, it's an excessive *relinquishing* of personal power, driven by fear and a desire for validation.

For example, someone who runs personal errands for their boss — despite it not being part of their job description — is not manipulating their boss into liking them. (It won't work anyway.) Their boss, testing those thin boundaries, is exploiting their need for approval.

In more intimate relationships, this can show up as "fawn" types gravitating towards hot/cold dynamics, where affection and love are offered unpredictably.

This is where the emotional abuse piece comes into play. You have someone who is controlling, who feels safest in relationships where they call the shots, and most loved when someone is actively seeking out their approval.

Enter: The "fawn" type.

An abuser will offer validation only to keep the fawn type tethered. But they'll withdraw that it before things feel secure, to ensure that the pleaser will continue going out of their way to "fawn" — continually giving over their power and autonomy so the abuse can continue.

I'm sharing this because, holy shit, my friends, the number of traumatic relationships I've thrown myself into — professionally, personally, romantically — to get stuck in this cycle, with my self-esteem pulverized, has made my heart so heavy.

It took stepping away from a friendship that had so thoroughly gaslit and demolished me — while plummeting into the deep depths of anorexia — before I realized that chasing controlling, emotionally unavailable, even abusive people was crushing my spirit.

I'm not going to leave you hanging, though. If you're reading this and say, "Holy shit... it me. Oh god. What do I do?" I'm here. I've got some advice, some books, some resources. Hang tight.

For starters, I'm going to ask you something: Which of your friends do you cancel on?

Personal experience: I had this tendency to bail on friends, partners, acquaintances, whoever, that were the most generous, warm, and emotionally-available. I avoided those relationships where love was free and easy. Because it didn't feel "earned," so I didn't feel "worthy."

Which isn't to say that everyone with this trauma response does this, BUT, we seek out the familiar. Which means many of us tend to avoid what feels unsafe. For people-pleasers, we're so used to working endlessly hard in relationships — it's disorienting when we aren't asked to.

I made a google doc (no, I seriously did) where I listed out people who were "way too nice to me." And then I asked myself, do I like this person? Do I enjoy their company? If I did, I sent them a text message and told them I wanted to commit to spending more time with them.

I was completely honest about my process with those folks, too. I said, "Listen, I get really scared when people are nice to me. You've always been SO nice to me, and I get afraid of disappointing you. But I want to change that, because I just enjoy your company so very much."

In my phone contacts, I put emojis by their names. I put strawberries next to people who were super loving. I put seedling emojis by folks who taught me things that made me think/grow. So when I saw a text from them, it reminded me that I should prioritize that message. 🌱🍓

And?

My life completely changed... in every imaginable way.

My "strawberry emoji people" went from being acquaintances/friendly to becoming chosen family that I literally could not imagine my life without. 

With the help of some amazing therapy, I grew to love myself so much — because that love was being modeled for me in a healthy way.

I'm going into a partial hospitalization program for my anorexia in the next couple weeks (because I've taken it out on my body as much as I have my mind), and my strawberry people (who are now all in a group text together) have been there every step of the way. 😭❤️🍓

Resources! 

I genuinely believe that every single person should be reading Pete Walker's book about complex trauma. "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma."

It's really damn good. It talks about fawn types in more detail!

I also wrote a blog entry last year about the pleaser/controller relationship type, if that sounds a little too relatable: https://letsqueerthingsup.com/2018/06/30/people-pleasers-can-be-drawn-to-toxic-relationships-its-important-to-know-why/

I chat a lot more about recovery from trauma/eating disorder stuff on my instagram as well. (I should probably be plugging it more regularly but I forget, sigh. Same handle as here!) 

So if this type of content speaks to you, I write about this on a weekly basis over there. 🌱

Most of all though, I just want to validate the hell out of you. ❤️ I understand the very hellish cycle that we find ourselves in when we're consumed by this idea that we need to be "exactly enough," and that, if we measure it out correctly, we'll never hurt or be hurt again.

But relationships involve putting ourselves in harm's way sometimes. What they shouldn't involve, though, is self-harm — and ultimately, that's what "fawning" does. We're harming ourselves. We're making ourselves smaller, we're self-silencing, and we're punishing ourselves.

You are allowed to have ALL the feelings. You are allowed to take up ALL the space. You're allowed to be everything that you are & then some. The right people — your people — will love you even more when they see how expansive your life becomes when you give yourself that space.

It doesn't happen overnight. It's a process! But I want you to know that it's a process you can begin at any time. It's never too late to give yourself permission to be, to show up more authentically, and to find those who will celebrate you for it. I promise you that. ❤️✨

PHEW that was a really long thread but... if even one of you is like "wait fuck this I'm gonna let myself be loved" then it was 100% worth the followers I lost in the process. 😂

(To them, I am sorry for flooding your Twitter feed, but I did it out of LOVE.)

Okay ily byeeee 👋🏻

Adding to this thread, since so many of us are in our feels right now: I’m listening to the song “Sum Of Our Parts” by @marylambertsing and FEELING IT.

“Which part of you clipped your own wings?”

Hugs to every single one of you. ♥️♥️♥️

I added a strawberry next to my name. Each time you see it, please know it’s me, right by your side, cheering you on in this messy and beautiful and weird journey we’re all on. ♥️🍓 

May you find your “strawberry people” and grow beyond what you ever thought possible! 🌱🌿🌷

[empressxmachina]

Party Foul, pt. 1 by Imperial-Radiance (that’s me)

Click the link above for DA or keep reading below here!

We're going on a trip in our favorite flying ship, zooming through the sky, three magic spies! Girl power. Here's a link to the picture. Where did it originate? I found it on Reddit, but...

“What do we do, Dom? What do we do!?”

A shrill broke out of an already broken vocal tract. Alcohol was never good for the throat, even if it was blended with coffee to hide the fact. The rotors of the helicopter piercing through the air echoed throughout the cabin, masking the beeps and dings of sensors in the hub and only drowned out by the accelerating beats of an overstimulated heartbeat, tippy taps of hands and feet upon cloth and metal, and a shaky, continually rising tone with every sentence.

“Nothing’s popping up on the scanner, Dom. Not. One. Thing.”

“I’m the pilot here, and you don’t think I know that, already!?” There had been plenty a time Domino had wanted to knock some sense into Glyph, but this incident had thrown them right in the eye of a scope, aligned perfectly with a crosshair. “Do I need to remind you how we got here? Why we’re doing this!?”

“No.” The questions may as well have been rhetorical as the response didn’t matter. They both knew the reminder was going to come anyway, and it sure did, drilling in hard.

“I told you not to get that tattoo, but you did,” Domino began. “I told you not to show Curio that tattoo, but you did. “I warned you not to tell her what it meant, but you did.”

Glyph attempted defending themselves, crossing their slightly slowed heart. “And, and, and… I warned her to not look into it, either! You can’t blame me for this!”

Domino barked back, nearly scaring Glyph’s jittery self through the windshield. “Are you kidding!? If not you, then I blame the damn Joe-bombs: all three you chugged like water in a desert.”

If she had known their clan gathering tonight would turn into a secret spy mission all because of a few drinks and a surprisingly easy to open cellar, then they all would’ve gone abstinent long ago. It probably would’ve made lots of other things easier over the years, too, but that’s why it’s called an addiction, isn’t it?

“Besides,” Domino continued, glazing over her own flaws, “you’re acting as if Curio wasn’t going to get curious. It’s in her damn name! Idiot!”

“Her or me?”

“Does it matter at this point? You’re both dead to me until we all get back and you two grovel to the Captain that this vehicle thievery was for a rescue mission and is not worth a demotion.”

“Two?” a new voice broke the semi-silence, sending both pairs of eyes in the front to the singular eye – well, singular working eye – in the back, a full person length away by the storage and supply bins. “You surely didn’t forget about me.”

“No, Jigsaw,” Domino assured, restarting the flight forward. “You’re the catalyst for us being up here, after all, and these two are gonna have to kiss your ass, too. Shockingly, or maybe not, you’ve got more to lose from this than I do.”

“Damn straight,” Jigsaw agreed, coincidentally scratching under her eyepatch, “but this is worth it. Curio’s like my own blood, even if she’s a sporadic dunce. Though, Dom, I could’ve swiped an amphibian if I’d known we’d be making an aquatic rescue.”

“Trust me; I would’ve let you do it, too, if we weren’t sent a sprinkle of a signal of her attempting to not drown on our way here, wherever this is.”

“Wait,” Glyph interjected, looking back and forth between the intimidating pilot and the one-eyed wonder. “You don’t know where this is? Neither of you has any idea?”

Jigsaw scoffed, sinking into her seat in preparation for whatever explanation Glyph was going to throw back. “I suppose that you do? Ha! Who am I kidding? I doubt it. You barely know what you got etched on your own back.”

Domino concurred with a snarky chuckle. “For real, and by the way, I really meant both of you back there, G: a duo of dolts, you are. If Curio knew how to not speak like she had marbles in her mouth while reading off those runes, she and thus we all wouldn’t be here right now. But, then again, the cause-and-effect line drawn has no forks, and where did it start?”

“I know; I know!” Glyph huffed, crossing her arms over themselves. “Please, for the love of all that is good, don’t tell me twice. I get this is my fault, but, seriously, do you have any idea where you’re going, Dom? Have you – don’t mind the pun – been running on autopilot this whole time?”

The wordplay was enough of a grievance on its own, but the nuances laced with it set Domino off on a larger bout of bothers, so much so that she followed Glyph’s insinuations, putting the helicopter on autopilot and turning to face her brazen companion head-on.

“So, what if I say yes, huh?” Domino probed, full of smug annoyance. “I’ve been making a beeline toward where Curio’s portal let out and nothing else. My proper reading of the runes put us a bit far from the mark, but you know that. Good thing this tin can was fueled up.”

“You’re welcome, by the way,” spouted a sassy Jigsaw, not necessarily wanting to be heard but needing to let the world know.

“Anyway,” Domino resumed to Glyph, making sure to roll her eyes with a smirk meant for their backseat buddy, “we may not be able to see Curio on the scanner, but we know where her portal was, and we’re getting crazy close by the looks of it. Why do you care how we got here if we, well, got here?”

“I don’t care how we got here!” Glyph clarified. “I care about where we’re going, and despite everything that you two have been saying about our destination, I’m ninety-nine percent sure of one thing.” She pointed out of the cabin at the only place their friend could’ve ended up, given her abilities and if all went circumstantially well, now just in front and below them. “That is not water.”

“For goodness’ sake, Glyph!” Jigsaw had had enough being an audience member, plus her lacking eyesight helped with nothing for getting any context to where Glyph’s glances were focused. Thus, she found herself swinging up to the front, squeezed between her buddies – Glyph’s side shielded in darkness but not enough to cloud her outstretched arm and hand – to see what was up and combat them. “What are you on…?”

She was going to combat her if there was anything to combat. But as it turned out, there wasn’t anything to fight. Glyph was one-hundred percent right. It sure wasn’t water, and just a few seconds later, she was proven even more correct.

A new, familiar blip appeared on the scanner as their familiar – their curious friend Curio, almost invisible and undetectable in both the vastness of their space and the encroaching darkness of the sky – surfaced in a pool, no, a lake of,

“Acid,” Domino breathed, setting the copter to hover once again with a much lighter approach this time as they stared into the rippling expanse. “That’s straight up acid.”

“What? No!” Glyph coughed in disbelief, turning away from the window ahead and looking at her clan-mate-turned-captain before considering the idea for an instant. “Well, you technically might be right, but it’s not the corrosive kind, I think. I hope. Call me crazy, but with those kinds of bubs popping around down there, I swear that looks more like a vat of tonic: that or soda.”

“Whatever it is,” Jigsaw sighed out of nowhere, catching the other two of the squad off guard, beginning to back away slowly, “I’m not going to be able to go down to get Curio like I thought it was.”

“What? Why do you…?” Domino leaned away from the radar and followed the path of the retreating voice, amazed to see how far back Jigsaw had gotten in such a short period. “Hey, where do think you’re going to get, going back like that? We’re off the ground in a helicopter. Besides the doors being locked, my bathroom’s bigger than this whole cabin.”

“I know that. But, trust me, I… cannot go down there. It just—Ugh, damn it.” As if the Fates were testing or humoring that theory, Jigsaw found herself clumsily crashing into the wall of tools and whatnot, making several of them fall to her feet. “No matter what this gear is supposed to protect us from,” she declared, plucking the fallen items one by one with on and off squats, “none of it will aid me down there.”

Domino raised an eyebrow at the idea, particularly when the sassy cyclops’ hands ran over a set of goggles for blocking chemical bursts.

“Is your eye still too gammy to risk a liquid leak?” she figured, believing Jigsaw was trying to fly over her greatest sensitivity, receiving a gasp of astonishment from Glyph as a result.

“Um…” The direct probe at their patched part was expected in the back of Jigsaw’s mind – frankly, it’s always expected – but the rest of her psyche didn’t consider the consideration to be upheld. So, for it to just be thrown into the air was, for lack of a better word, uncomfortable. “Well… it doesn’t help the scenario. Thanks for bringing it up.”

“You know what I mean. I just don’t see—Ugh, mind the pun. I can’t figure why you’d find yourself unfit to make some moves.”

“Dom, I don’t need both eyes to see why, but, frankly, you do. As great as it is that all you’re looking for is Curio’s safety, can you do your best to expand that and look out for all of us?”

Domino was becoming angered by Jigsaw’s claims – eyes turning as red as the skies surrounding them all. But, after seeing how her taller, depth-deficient gal pal was genuinely concerned about her own safety for once versus everyone else’s, sounding confident that she and thus they all would fail, Domino’s scarlet scleras faded back to white as she calmed herself and decided to comply with Jigsaw’s wishes.

A sigh escaped her lips as she ran her hands over her heated face and sat back straight in her pilot’s chair to take in the entirety of the vista the autopilot had to offer the aerial trio. Yet, rather than being able to tell the others off, Domino could only join their shared succumbing to dread.

***

Emerging from the effervescent, rune-spouted portal, the person-patrolling crew were met with the first-calm, now-ominous quiet of nature at dusk: the copter’s rotors and scanners and the ladies’ internal clocks being the sole shifts in the silence. The warm colors of the sky and wispy clouds way up above aligned perfectly with the intense heat emanating around them. Acknowledgments of them being cooked in their toaster of a helicopter and its warping on the hub controls had gotten so old so early in their travels that any further utterance of it would probably ignite a full-on brawl.

The view of the dimly sunlit suburbia far below was normal enough to be a tranquil distraction long ago: a nice, new sight to see in comparison to the Gothic aesthetic of the clan’s castle of a clubhouse. The bustling metropolis in the distance reminded them of the one with which they were familiar and the frequent long-distance commutes to and from it, whereas the collective of abodes in the adjacent neighborhoods resonated more with their sweeter days before their coming together as teens.

Now, encroaching on their thirties or burrowed comfortably within them in eldest Jigsaw’s case, they had been through hell and back too many times to count with multitudes of knowledge from almost two decades of work continually building with each new excursion. So, the concerns they had when the aerial view of high rises and homes already seemed extensively stretched and detailed, despite being up so high and flying so far, weren't just from their current heated, hostile hysteria.

The altimeter had sworn that the copter was multiple kilometers above the ground, yet the ladies could count every single brick, shingle, and plank of siding on every building they passed without any struggle. At home at the same height, doing so – flying and observing – would’ve been impossible without any technical or magical assistance, yet here they were doing both. One look at the controls showed that no window magnification was in place, but with the heat setting everything and everyone aflame, who was to say that was true?

From the surprisingly legible words on billboard-sized yard signs and city block-sized, actual billboards to the style of the infinite, unreachable skyline and further mountains beyond, their current location couldn’t have been very different than that of their home base, castle compound and all. The closer they were getting to reaching Curio, the harder it was hitting way too close to home, making her quick, exact rescue even more necessary but difficult with every second.

Because in the particular direction that they were going, there wasn’t much of a transition in the locale. The main city continually greeted its silhouetted self to their right with the start of suburbia guarding it, while their left showed that they were definitely deep in the thick of it. One by one, they had passed fraternal duplicate homes that wouldn't have made anyone bat an eyelash if it weren't for their immensity. They all looked generic but fitting for their location, places someone could see themselves raising a family. Well, most of them did.

One looked like it had the potential, but it was shadowed by a mess of danger for the ladies and a literal mess, similar to the ones they left at home to get here. Of course, it was the one that contained Curio.

It was as though the place was innately calling out to the trio and the rest of the world that it was special, aka someone was there that really shouldn't be. This home – well, as much of it that was visible, given they never were above a gutter – broke away from the stained Pickett fence aesthetic, choosing to block off its space with disgustingly manicured hedges except the back wall that was literally a brick, back wall. Disgusting, it was, because the dissonance between their pristine uniformity and all they corralled was appalling.

Disregarding the only visible vehicle aside from their own adjacent to the home, looking like an alien invasion that could engorge an entire town, multiple obstacles were scattered across the nature reserve that someone somewhere called a backyard that could've easily (and still could) wrought harm to the heroes in the helicopter. An alien's ignorance would've been most appreciated when scanning over them to not know for sure that they were threatening. In any other context, they wouldn't have been, but seeing how they had already been used (and used harshly) and how many there were in style and number, they couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The array of bright baubles and broken bottles inferred quite the feedback loop they fed to each other. But, in truth, there was nothing like relaxing in the backyard with friends playing throwing or ball games with one hand and a full glass of something pungent and throat-piercing going down your gullet with the other.

Lo and behold, the superfluous brick wall perched the latter, one made of plastic and full of some perceived potable in which the missing, comparably miniature miss Curio treaded for her life at the awe of three, close clan mates.

Next: sometime, eventually... probably... I don't know... Read this journal for an "explanation". You want more? Fucking push me. Hi, I'm Domino. It's nice to meet you. /s

[melonoverlord]

New ask for my lil skater sis

Which parent do they look the most like?

Definitely her dad, which she loathes. She got all of his features, and especially when she’s older she’s the spitting image of him (except much prettier and happier).

Is there a name they were almost given (either by their parents or during character creation)?

She was almost named Aamani after her grandmother, but is extremely glad she isn’t because she loves being Sarita. It’s only annoying when someone tries to call her Sarah or Rita because she thinks they are ugly names, but she loves being almost name twins with her big sis.

What were they like as a kid (if they’re currently a child, what would they be like as a teen)?

She’s currently a child (or well, she’d say “almost adult” but she’s twelve), but as a teen she would take the skater punk aesthetic to a new level. Kari fully supports all her piercings, hair dyeing, and when she’s old enough, tattoos. She’d also love dunking on all her friends, especially Benny.

What’s their drinking tolerance and what kind of drunk are they?

Kari will not let her drink until she’s 18 but she definitely has the highest drinking tolerance of the younger squad except for Bridgette, and after 4 drinks, is very loud and boisterous trying to start a fight with everyone just because she can. Even people bigger than her. Especially people bigger than her.

Where do they like to be touched?

Sari is the queen of fist bumps and secret handshakes, but other than hands, she does like throwing her entire bodyweight on top of people she cares about, so when people are chilling she will come in and sit next to them and just throw her legs over theirs and start talking about her day. Really the only one who’s enamored by it is Ezra.

What’s their favorite position (top/bottom/switch/pillow princess/etc.)

When she’s older, she’ll be a pretty teasy top to her himbo of a boyfriend, because it’s almost impossible to fluster him with verbal flirts because he is more just in love with everything she is and does than what she says about him (plus he has that self love that he knows he’s great because Philly told him so), but is easily flustered when those flirts become more sensual and touchy. Because no one ever taught him how to respond to it.

What are their kinks?

When Sari and Ezra get older to do anything sensual or sexual, Kari sits them down for a long long conversation because with Ezra’s power and Sari’s lack thereof, it can quickly become manipulative or toxic, which no party wants. So one of the ways they will find they can take that worry away (and something they find they’re both into) is making Ez unable to speak and really putting Sari into the power position. They’re both more vanilla than some of the others of their group, but they do like the very sweet gentle dom/sub that can go both directions.

How do they feel about adrenaline (roller coasters, extreme sports, etc.)?

Unsurprisingly, Sari is right behind her sister in doing dangerous stunts to feel the rush of being on a mission. She’s the first to try anything and usually is the first to get hurt unless one of the others intervene.

What is their fight or flight response?

Definitely fight. She will punch and kick until she’s listened to, god dammit.

What’s their pain tolerance?

Usually Kari edges her little sister out in every category, but Sari actually has a higher pain tolerance than her. Mainly because Sarita’s more dexterous than Kari, but also she can take more hits before she’s down. Sari likes to say it’s her own chi, even though everyone knows it isn’t.

What character archetype are they the most like (the Innocent, the Hero, etc.)

The Magician. Sarita wants to show that she can be just as powerful as her friends. She doesn’t have the mechanical or technological prowess that Kari has, but Sari has more of something to prove and more of a drive to show that she can be great and she can be powerful.

What TV-Tropes trope would they be?

Badass Adorable. She’s the little sister that everyone wants and she’s even willing to become a vigilante to play with the older kids.

What John Mulaney quote/bit do they most embody?

‘So, we’re going on the highway. We’ve been on the road for three hours. And in the distance, we see a McDonald’s. We see the golden arches. And we got so excited. We started chanting, “McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s!” And my dad pulled into the drive-thru, and we started cheering. And then, he ordered one black coffee for himself. And kept driving.’

She’s simultaneously the kids and the dad.

With the exception of love interests and immediate family, who are they closest to?

Outside of Kari who she thinks the world of and her future stupid boo Ezra, she’s pretty close to Bridgette and later Ashi. In her own perfect world, Ashi is what Kari should’ve been. A cool big sister who can show her the ropes without acting like the parental figure as well. Sarita just wants to party. However, she will eventually become best friends with Benny because as everyone knows, when you’re straight and you’re a jock you just find the nearest straight jock and be friends with them.

What is their moral alignment? What would have to happen for it to shift?

She’s too calculated to be full chaotic, but she’s straddling the line between neutral and chaotic good. She’s much more likely to bend the rules than outright break them so she can defend herself under and circumstance. While she could never go evil, she does whatever she can to twist a situation to fit her needs.

Are they a morning person? What are they like before 8am?

Sarita is not a morning person and you can never make her a morning person. If she’s up before 11am, something is horrendously wrong. She is just a lump of potatoes in the shape of a human who doesn’t do anything but sit and wait for her hot chocolate and bagel.

What are they like when they’re tired?

She starts to get a little silly when tired. She will make the randomest jokes that are more on par with what Ezra makes, which he finds the absolute best. She also will start playing with her hair more because having her fingers busy is the only way to keep her awake.

What are they like in arguments?

She’s like Bridgette in that she can hold a grudge, especially on behalf of others. If someone’s talking shit about someone she loves, she will stare them down and debunk everything they say. However, when it comes to generic arguments about everyday things, she loves to troll people and make them look like idiots. She will pretend to not know what a burger is just because you told her she took your lunch.

What is their dominant hand?

She’s naturally a rightie, but taught herself to write with her left hand because she’s that bitch.

Out of 10, how happy are they? How happy do they think they are?

Out of all the kids in the Library, she’s probably had the least amount of trauma, and although she’s definitely had struggles (her parents abandoned the family at two, leaving an eleven year old still figuring herself out to care for her baby sister and also being the only child in the Library besides Kauri not to have powers), but she’s still at a good 8/10. Now let’s see if it stays that way.

[gigsoupmusic]

AVA London (Printworks, 13-14 March 2020). Conference and Club showcase (culminating in an epic virus-defying live set from Orbital).

Well done to AVA London for pulling off, in the light of the Coronavirus pandemic, a two-day conference-and-club showcase at the enormous Printworks complex in south-east London. Friday the 13th was dedicated to a series of conferences and interviews spearheaded by music industry leaders, held in four different rooms simultaneously. Saturday was dedicated to electronic music, both DJ and live, with ample chances to network further and mingle with like-minded members of the EDM tribe.

We start our review with the Friday conference. Please scroll down if you are solely interested in Orbital, though we'd love it if you can read about all the fantastic industry-specific sessions as well! Everything hinged upon Thursday's COBRA meeting, and AVA London and the guys at Broadwick Live, as well as those who had been looking forward to the event, must have been very relieved when Public Health England gave the go-ahead for mass gatherings to carry on as normal. It was certainly touch-and-go (no pun intended). Gratitude must also be bestowed upon the organisers for ensuring that the toilets were plentiful and kept clean, staff did not use their fingers to open cans, and there were fully-stocked hand sanitiser dispensers on almost every wall. We were surprised by how easily people had got into the custom of touching elbows instead of shaking hands; something that looked so alien when seen at the start of football matches a couple of weeks ago this weekend seemed second nature.

Friday morning began with registrations and a chance to get one's bearings around the various rooms in Printworks, and visit the various stalls run by the likes of Denon DJ, Noatune Studios and Point Blank Music School, among others. The opening keynote talk was about 30 Years of Ninja Tune, with Coldcut, Actress and Jayda G. Sadly, Coldcut had had to pull out, as they were feeling ill so it was a sensible decision, but there was still a full house to listen to what Actress and Jayda G had to say and they did not disappoint. Actress (real name Darren J Cunningham) became a music producer at a young age, his footballing career with West Brom having been curtailed following an injury. He set up his own label, Werkdiscs, in 2004, but soon became bored with genre-specific nights (eg techno, drum'n'bass). Nowadays, genre-collision is commonplace, but when he started doing it it was liberating and, in his words, quite groundbreaking. Winning numerous accolades for his second album, Splazsh, it was not long before he began working in 2014 with Ninja Tune, the famous label originally set up by Coldcut in 1990, feeling immediately at ease with their ninja-style logo, which resonated with Actress's jujitsu dabblings in his youth.

(from left to right: host Joe Muggs, Jayda G, and Actress) Actress has also been innovative in the field of artificial intelligence and music, in a musical project called Young Paint. Recently, having been unable to make a flight to Sónar Istambul for a gig (Coronavirus, again), he was able to send co-ordinates over to a stand-in so that a gig he was scheduled to perform there could still go ahead as planned. The program he uses re-interprets his own sounds, so this was not as daunting a task as one would first imagine. (We touched upon AI and music in our review of Y△CHT's gig last month – this is clearly becoming a hot topic in the music industry right now!) Canadian Jayda G is a relative newcomer both to the music world and to Ninja Tune. Having completed a masters degree in environmental toxicology in Vancouver just a couple of years ago, Jayda admits that he has been learning as she goes. 'The best thing in this industry is to know yourself as an artist and be really grounded in that', she confides to host Joe Muggs. She loved the fact that Ninja Tune respected this and did not treat her any differently because of her choices. Muggs reflected on just how diverse Ninja Tune's repertoire of talent really is, especially when one considers they also have huge names such as Bonobo on their books, who sells out stadia in the US, occasionally accompanied by an 11-piece orchestra. He fondly remembered bumping into Matt Black in the chill-out room of the old squatted DSS office on Coldharbour Lane in the mid-90s. He was in awe at seeing how Matt and Hex were able to come up with sophisticated visuals using an old Amiga computer, everything working perfectly among the high-spirited mayhem that surrounded them. We too were at these legendary parties (Brixton CoolTan Arts Collective), and can fortunately share in his happy recollections of these special events. (See the Urban 75 website's page on CoolTan for more information about this amazing place.) Following the opening keynote event, we tried to attend as many of the simultaneous streams as possible, though of course we couldn't be everywhere at the same time, so we probably missed quite a lot.

Upstairs, Oliver Hackett chaired a discussion about the power of the brand in the festival world. Branding is so important when it comes to festivals, especially as it can mean that tickets can be sold even before line-ups are announced, as customers become loyal when they have a good experience.

The panel discussed all manner of things, from how they look after the schedules of their residents, through to the need to change the various support acts, so as to keep things fresh but familiar at the same time. Meanwhile, Tristan Hunt was moderating a discussion on the climate crisis. This was a very lively talk, reflecting on how we all need to become more responsible, from the fans to the event organisers to the artists themselves. Artists should learn the science, not post fake news on their social media, and certainly refrain from posting photos on their Insta accounts of them jetting off to perform at gigs: the glorification of flying needs to end. We learned that the culture industry is the second largest in the UK after finance, and that we all need to play our bit.

With regards merch, we need to be aware that a single kilo of cotton needs twenty tons of water in its manufacture. We need to stop using single-use plastics. We should sign up on the Music Declares Emergency website, which calls for immediate governmental responses. Those who sign up acknowledge the environmental impact the music industry has and commit themselves to promote cultural change. We need to analyse how we travel to festivals, discourage punters from driving or, if there is no viable option via public transport, encourage lift-sharing. There is no specific problem that we cannot solve – it is all about the mindset. The panel praised Glastonbury's recent efforts, not just in their banning of plastic bottles last year, but in the creation of the Gas Tower stage in the Shangri-La area, made out of 10 tonnes of plastic collected from beaches in south west England, an initiative that really makes the fans feel they are making a tangible difference. But when we see festivals falling short on sustainability, we need to call them out. Lobby them about their lack of green credentials, write a letter to the local politician if you're so inclined, or even to your own politician. Keep the pressure on! Be inventive! The panel referred to a recent festival which used an Australian animal as their logo; they were lobbied to raise money for the bushfires in Australia. Other suggestions included a call to start your own movement and have a real impact on your local community. If you are well-organised, you could easily impact 200-300 people without too much effort. Also, make an effort to invest only in ethical, sustainable companies that you believe in. When it comes to festivals, support events that really make an effort to be greener, even if they are a little more expensive because of their sustainability credentials. Finally, the panel endorsed Giki, an app that helps you shop more sustainably in the UK and cut down your own environmental impact. Giki's website is here. For us, the best discussion came next: "The Art of Self Care", chaired by Tom Middleton, the legendary recording artist and DJ, and one half of course of Global Communication among many other projects (do try to catch Global Communication on 19 September at the Jazz Café in their much-anticipated rescheduled concert, where Middleton will be joined by Ross Sampson and a string quartet to perform live classics from their 76:14 album, among others).

We had no idea that he was also a sleep expert, an issue very close to our own hearts. This was by far and away the best discussion of the day, and included two mental health professionals (Lara Cullen from The People Person, as well as music support counsellor, singer and trained psychotherapist Denise Sherwood) who were joined by Tristan Hunt again, fresh from his discussions on climate change. The music industry is not an easy one and is tough on artists' and producers' mental health. This should come as no surprise to anyone, given the amount of high-profile people we have lost prematurely in recent years. What can we do, as a community, to help not just our own mental health but those around us? Cullen admitted that there is a perception that people in the music industry feel they must always put on a happy face, however implausible their constant happiness must be. She is however hopeful for the future, as there is nowadays much more openness about mental health; artists are on the whole happier to talk about it than in the past. Hunt agreed with this, and showed how the very existence of this discussion shows how far we have come in destigmatising mental health.

Sherwood said that it should be 'okay to say that you're not okay', and bigged up the great work done by the independent charity Help Musicians UK, highly recommending their academic study on the incidence of mental health and musicians called Can Music Make You Sick?, and the report can be downloaded for free from here. Hunt revealed that suicide is four times higher in the music community than in society as a whole. Electronic music creation can be a lonely job, particularly when starting out. Pay can be low, and invariably you would need to hold down another job as well. When you factor in time spent working your day-job, time performing and time in the studio, as well as dealing with social media, there's very little time left to sleep, and because one's life is so topsy-turvy, said sleep can be very poor quality indeed. This leads invariably to poor mental health. Social media is a particular bug-bear for Tom Middleton, so much so that he deleted all social media apps from his mobile phone, dedicating just a single night a week (Fridays) to reply to his various messages. It is so different to the 'faceless techno' of the 90s. Nowadays, it is all about getting one's followers (and, sadly, having to read online hatred from trolls, some of the time). This means huge added pressure, both emotional and physical. Mental health must come first. Switch off those apps! (Most mobile phones will show you how many hours a day you use social media. If you do not know, do check it out. You may be surprised!) Unlike your typical 9-to-5 job, the music industry is anything but. It does not get any easier once you are more successful! Constantly flying across time-zones to perform, plays havoc on one's body clock. This, coupled with the constant oscillations of seratonin, dopamine and oxytocin: the euphoria of the DJ booth or the stage, followed by the isolation of the hotel room.

Hunt recommended some simple techniques to help bring about a kind of routine, even something small such as doing stretching exercises before turning on the WiFi after waking up. Middleton agreed: 'We are normalised by routine as a species'. He tells us how we are in fact the only species to disrupt that innate normalisation. We don't give ourselves a chance to stop. We need to recalibrate. Cullen chipped in to explain how important it is to look after ourselves physically too. Make changes that work for you. For her, it was giving up alcohol, which she did nine months ago. Not that she is suggesting anyone else should do that: 'Alcohol is fun', she chuckled. But it worked for her. Middleton has some other techniques, to trick the body into thinking it's night-time when it isn't; using things such as SleepSound ear plugs (which reduce sleep-disrupting noise by 36dB but still allow you to hear alarms or crying babies) and high-quality eye-masks. If on tour, go out in the morning without sunglasses, and wear shades only in the afternoon. When going to bed, simulate a sunset by using red bedside lights – he recommended Himalayan crystal salt lamps. Drink 8-10 cups of water a day, avoid caffeine after midday, and aim for 7.5 hours' sleep if possible. Alcohol can also be a disruptor of REM sleep. He then spoke about the four sleep Chronotypes (wolf, bear, lion and dolphin). Google it for more information!

Another tip was using CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) to remove negative thought. Write down the things stressing you out onto a piece of paper, then throw it away (as though you are symbolically throwing away your negativity). Then write down a new list, of all the things you need to do the following day. Practice gratitude, and try to crack a smile. Get the tech out of the bedroom, no browsing just before bed, and switch on that red lamp. Those who have difficulty sleeping can try a variety of substances, including magnesium, passion flower and chamomile tea. Kiwi fruit, as well as tryptophan-heavy foods such as turkey, can also be very helpful. Listening to recordings of nature, especially waterfalls and the sea, can be very useful too. (Middleton's latest album is a scientifically-tested album of soundcapes, Sleep Soundly, which saw him collaborate with cognitive neuroscientists and is so effective it has to have a disclaimer not to listen to it while driving or operating machinery). We will have to give it a listen! Of course, it doesn't have to be music or sounds of the sea. There are plenty of sleepcasts out there, many of which can be found for free on YouTube. These are spoken word audio-files, told in a deadpan way, showing that bed-time stories needn't solely be the remit of the young child. How appropriate that this discussion took place on 13th March 2020, World Sleep Day! Time to move to another room. We chose the interesting discussion moderated by Sarah McBriar from AVA, asking innovators in immersive technology what actually makes an experience truly immersive. Should we start with the creative concept or with the technology? Many examples were given on the screens throughout the discussion, including some of the panellists' fantastic visuals at Glastonbury, including Dan Tombs's projections which accompanied Jon Hopkins's show at The Park stage among others. For a show to be truly immersive, 'You need to be transported from somewhere else', said Tombs.

They also gave some great examples of great practice, such as the recent Punchdrunk production (Beyond the Road: Journeys in Sound and Space) at the Saatchi Gallery, which used music by James Lavelle. If you missed it, it's impossible to describe. They also mentioned the awesome Four Tet gig at Alexandra Palace, a surround-sound immersive experience which also featured tens of thousands of light-bulbs (installed by Squidsoup). The panellists were jealous they hadn't thought of doing something similar themselves. So, as you can see, It's not just about the visuals any more. So much is happening now with binaural technology, a feeling of really being immersed inside the sound. The future is really limited only by one's imagination. And, of course, by technology. The advent of 5G will help, but right now the biggest stumbling block is interoperability: getting devices to talk to one another, quickly, to make the show more efficient. We were unable to get even 4G on our phones inside Printworks, so we concur absolutely with these thoughts! GIGsoup readers may remember we reviewed Bit-Phalanx's 24rpm EDM festival last October, which included an opportunity to try out Björk's immersive virtual reality experience of her Vulnicura album. We asked the panel whether they could foresee VR being used in large-scale settings, eg as another way of immersing oneself at a live concert. Sadly, they did not believe the technology is really there yet. Much more plausible would be possibly integrating augmented reality instead: people bring their phones to record their own memories of gigs anyway so, since they are already pointing their screens up to the stage, it isn't inconceivable that AR could be integrated to make a concert seem more immersive – at least the technology is already there for this! It goes without saying that we think that Björk has really nailed something here: so impressed were we, that we foresee more artists' albums coming out in VR in the future, perhaps even re-issues like Vulnicura, for people to immerse themselves into the music in the comforts of their own homes. But as for using it in a large-scale crowd setting, we 're not quite there yet! We then learned that Orbital sadly were not going to be able to give the closing keynote speech. Again, Coronavirus had intervened, this time affecting their travel arrangements. We were relieved to learn that at least they were still due to be performing on the Saturday, which you can read about later on in this review. The Hartnoll brothers were replaced by a chat with Maribou State (Chris Davids and Liam Ivory). They gave us an engaging talk about how they produce music together. Whereas they used to have a studio, circumstances have now changed for them, and geography has meant that lately they have needed to collaborate remotely. This is the first time they are in this situation, though have some studio-time booked up from next May so as to work on their upcoming album, in places as diverse as Devon, Derby and (Coronavirus permitting) Hamburg.

When they are in the studio they do like to be in places where there are as few distractions as possible. In the countryside, you sometimes cannot even get a mobile phone signal, which helps. Now they can often put in 20-hour sessions. (At this point, we really should remind our readers of Tom Middleton's warnings about this kind of lifestyle, see above!) Maribou State then joked (or were they?) that if they do have to self-isolate because of the ongoing pandemic, this will be a wonderful excuse to make even more music, undisturbed. Let's hope that things don't get so bad!

There wasn't really anything too deep about this session, no doubt because it had been put together in a hurry. Some of the questions would have seemed more ideally suited for Orbital. For example, the host (Observer columnist Séamas O'Reilly) asked the duo about how they felt about the dwindling London club scene, with so many venues shutting down (notwithstanding the fabulous Printworks, an unusual recent welcome addition). While it would have been fascinating to hear the Hartnolls' response, having been there right from the beginning, Maribou State made us feel rather old by saying that when they first moved to London, most of the clubs were already closed or closing (they just caught the final nights at The End and Canvas). Therefore, they've never known anything else, having 'missed the golden era. So it seems the norm now'. Ah, to be young again! And with this, the Friday conference was over, though there was some music and final cocktails to enjoy in the backstage bar. All in all, a fantastic day out; though, if we were to have any criticism, it would be to try to have a little more gender diversity on the panels in future. Female faces were few and far between. Of course, this is largely a problem with the industry as a whole, and the discussion panels were simply reflective of this. Hopefully next year we will see more gender diversity everywhere. Saturday was a brand new day and our minds were getting excited about Orbital. When we turned up we were immediately disorientated, as the Printworks venue was laid out in a completely different way to how it was on the Friday. We were of course worried about how many people would even be there given the barrage of scary rolling news. We knew that 3,700 tickets had been sold. In the end, almost 2,000 people decided to take one for Team #Herd-Immunity which was amazing. Not that we were at all worried. Having been there on the Friday we knew that Printworks were taking hygiene extremely seriously. We were probably safer than in our own sitting room. We normally only cover live music so we were rushing to get there for Overmono, but we were happy we got there early and caught the tail-end of Ross from Friends' DJ set. Real name: Felix Clary Weatherall – no relation to the much-missed Andy Weatherall who was initially scheduled to be here this weekend before he was cruelly taken from us last month. Felix is the son of Jamie Clary, who for the older GIGsoup readers here is 1980s squat-party royalty. In the past few years, Felix/Ross has been making a huge name for himself ever since being taken under the wing of Flying Lotus. We loved his Balearic-tinged lo-fi set, which was appreciated fully by the congregated masses.

(Overmono) We made sure we were in pole position for two brothers named Tom and Ed. No, it wasn't Tom and Ed Chemical, who aren't even brothers anyway, but the aforementioned bona fide siblings known as Overmono (also known as Truss and Tessela), who played a beautiful downtempo techno set (we're not sure how else to describe it) which included all their hits, including "The Mabe" and "Machine Love", though it was "Daisy Chain" that succeeded in blissing us out.

Such a clean sound, and wonderful to see them playing it all live – it was a real privilege. Overmono have been entertaining the crowds everywhere, from Moscow to Osaka, so it was great to see them up-close here in London. Joy Orbison adequately filled the subsequent 90-minute gap until the headline act, the wonderful Phil and Paul Hartnoll, in other words the legendary duo that is Orbital. Oh, Orbital. We have seen them live so many times we have lost count, from New Year's Eve at Alexandra Palace in 1996 to countless raves and parties and, of course, their era-defining performances at Glastonbury Festival (where they are strongly rumoured to be headlining in the Dance Field later this year). Standing backstage, we were watching them get ready, making sure the batteries were working in their famous head-lights, egging one another on, prepping themselves like wrestlers about to enter the ring. It was just fabulous to see these two legends prepare, knowing what was going to come next. Please indulge us as we share some of the photos – unless you are truly an Orbital fan, like we are, this will mean nothing to you….

Those headlights have a special place in our hearts. It took us right back to when we were in a nightclub called Arsenal in Oliva, near Valencia in Spain, in 1990, and we chatted in the car-park to the super-approachable legendary DJ Chimo Bayo, world-famous for his groundbreaking and genre-defining mákina hit "Así me gusta a mí (X-Ta Sí X-Ta No)" (yes, we are showing our age here). The double headlamp was a beautiful gimmick that Bayo started but Orbital redoubled and took to stratospheric levels. Normally, when we are at festivals for Orbital concerts, we never actually see the Hartnoll brothers' faces, but instead see four lights bobbing up and down in the smoky haze. We were more excited to see these headlamps up close than we were to see any item in the British Museum in recent visits. Even though Orbital have probably gone through hundreds if not thousands of headlamps since the early 90s. We are not ashamed of this.

Anyhow, enough of the sycophancy, we have a review to get on with writing. To rapturous applause, Phil and Paul came on stage. Phil had his sweater rolled up over his mouth to begin with, a cheeky nod to the Coronavirus pandemic. They began with "Monsters Exist", the title track to their recent album of the same name, which is utterly suggestive of a bleak dystopian future. It is an amazing prelude to an outstanding album that is up there with their classics. You cannot help feel that you are in the middle of a video game trying to escape monsters. What a start!

A sample of Professor Brian Cox's voice, telling us about how the universe will one day come to an end, meant that the Hartnoll brothers were going to regale us with their challenging song "There will come a time". This would surely not be an obvious choice were it not for the unusual situation with which we are currently faced. If you are unfamiliar with the track, it is basically a monologue specially recorded by Professor Cox for the band about the future, with an ultimately encouraging message that the time is now to embrace curiosity and love.

Orbital continued with this theme, playing the famous sample 'It's, it's, it's like a cry for survival' which segued into that famous 303 sound and those instantly recognisable dissonant horns; we were transported back to the early 90s for one of their most celebrated songs, "Impact (The Earth is Burning)" from their Orbital 2 album (chromatically identified by everyone as the "brown" album). From thereon in, the brothers treated us to hit after hit, plucked from their 30-year back-catalogue, dipping only occasionally into some of their newer stuff. We knew that this was an extraordinary concert, perhaps the last live gig for some time before the government invariably stops mass gatherings. The point about our ongoing fight for survival had been made. Now it was time to lighten the mood.

Orbital started to play "Wonky", the title track from the album of the same name. We hadn't danced so much in ages. Everyone we met was so lovely. A surreal moment then happened when we bumped backstage into comedian and actor Mat Horne (Gavin from Gavin and Stacey, and the grandson to Catherine Tate's wonderful Nan character). You couldn't meet a nicer chap.

He is a close friend of the Hartnoll brothers and, as any Orbital anorak will tell you, gets tormented and ultimately killed by a cat in the actual musical video for "Wonky". Time to share one of Orbital's best videos (and songs) from the current millennium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9675nvyses Having seen Orbital so many times over the years decades, we were relieved that this was a very adult set, for the cognoscenti. It was without a doubt one of their best. They didn't bother with the over-commercial fodder like their remix of the theme-tune to The Saint or, God help us, Doctor Who; songs which, while fun, are a little bit cringey when you consider their back catalogue. Okay, we did get a very short spurt of "Heaven is a Place of Earth", mixed as usual into their highly personal track from 1992, "Halcyon" (dedicated to their mother's addiction to benzodiazepines). Talking of mothers, they duly reminded us to tell her "Satan" this weekend, and the band also played (of course) their outstanding crowdpleaser "Belfast". How could they not?

Pretending their set had come to an end, which prompted 'one more tune!' to resonate around the packed-out main Press Hall, they played their classic tune "Chime" which transported us right back to that Ally Pally New Year's Eve party some twenty-five years ago (which was the tune they chose to play at midnight). They ended with "Where is it Going?" from their Wonky album.

Was their time for one more tune? They looked over towards their manager, who was getting fidgety. The crowd wanted more. Phil definitely wanted more. He was loving it on stage, spinning round and fist-pumping throughout the set. He gesticulated to Paul: we still have five minutes… And then came a genuine extra song, the 1993 classic "Lush 3". What a perfect way to end a great set. And then… it was all over. Will this be the last major gig anyone will see for a while in the UK? At the time of writing this review, we don't know. If it is, it was certainly one to remember. We also met some lovely people during the night (remembering always to bump elbows instead of shake hands!) Here's one particularly fun-loving foursome we met on our travels to the smoking area.

We really want to highlight just how fantastic a venue Printworks is. It is clean, the staff are extremely friendly, water and earplugs are freely available, hygiene is of the utmost concern. The toilets were always spotless and fully stocked with toilet paper and hand gel (no mean feat given the current climate of panic-buying and subsequent shortages). The aforementioned hand sanitiser dispensers on every wall were constantly topped up throughout the two-day event. This is a well-run club, and a welcome breath of fresh air. We also want to give a special shout-out to Jack Docherty from Broadwick Live, who was the party's publicist and therefore our main port of call over the weekend festivities. We have been in this reviewing lark for many years, but when it came to providing information, helping out with everything from backstage access and hospitality to tech, we have not come across a team as professional and helpful as they were. No, we had never heard of Jack or Broadwick Live before this weekend, and they have not asked us to mention them in this review. But credit where it's due. We thank you. If we are going to be facing a long break from live gigs, we couldn't have possibly ended of a higher high than we did on Saturday 14th March 2020. Hopefully our next gig review will not be too far away. And, again hopefully, you will all stay safe out there, whatever you are doing. We knew we took a risk coming out. But, a funny thing about regret is, that it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done. And by the way…. Read the full article

[the-faultofdaedalus]

My take on wingfic. Enjoy!

Tony stared at his reflection, avoiding the blue glow from the thing in his chest, muffled by his shirt and the cast pressing his arm to his front, at his wings, folded tightly behind him. 

Scratched, and scared, but largely unharmed.

Because they hadn't needed to harm them. 

He flexed them experimentally, trying to bring them up and out, and winced at how the movement pulled at his chest, at the flight muscles they’d cut out, the places where his sternum was no longer the anchor he needed it to be.

He looked and remembered flying, air in his face and sun on his back and laughing with Rhodey or Pepper or Happy.

They hadn't needed to clip his wings, mutilate them like Yinsen’s had been, to prevent them from flying away. 

The ruined muscles in his chest, his lungs and heart, did that for him.

He looked and remembered falling, a metal suit, arcing into the sky only to crash back down, unable to use his wings to brake for fear of the force tearing his chest apart.

He might not be able to fly under his own power ever again, but like hell that was going to stop him from trying.

He could fly.

He could fly, and it might not be the same as flying under his own power, not anywhere near it, but there was still something that felt larger than him, larger than almost everything, about shooting through the air on something he’d built, far faster than he’d ever gone before.

He’d almost died, he’d been so close, less than a foot away from pavement and even the most advanced armor in the world couldn't have saved him from that and he’d never felt so alive.

He’d outed himself as Iron Man, a superhero, and he held his wings up high despite the pain in his chest, the reactor carefully concealed beneath layers of shirts.

He’d nearly died, but instead of the exhilaration from his first flight, or driving too fast on winding roads, he just felt tired. 

That, more than anything, cemented his decision.

No one was going to know he couldn't fly. If they did, it would just be another weakness, another thing people could use to hurt him.

His wings drooped all the time now, the palladium exhausting him too much for him to keep up the ploy of strong, normal wings.

He knew Natalie wasn't who she said she was, seriously, a woman who claimed to have grown up in LA, and spend a good amount of time in Japan flinching at an earthquake, but able to take Happy down in half a second flat?

Whichever government organisation she belonged to probably suspected, or at least that the poisoning was making him too sick to fly, but as long they didn't know the truth, he could...

Well, live with it was probably a poor choice of words. 

At least the company and Iron Man were in good hands, and if those went to shit, his bots would always survive him.

The world would be just fine without him.

You know, it really didn't occur to him how much he didn't want to die now that not dying was a legitimate option. 

An option he was going to take. 

He didn't bother waiting for JARVIS to finish running tests on the new core before shoving it into his chest, it wasn't like it could be any more fatal than the old one, and the first thing he noticed was the energy. His wings straightened for the first time in months, and he grinned.

The second thing was the coconut.

That was a little weird. 

A god had thrown him out a window. 

Fantastic. Really, that was just great. He’d been meaning to test the Mk. 6 deployment system, and what better time to do that than falling to his death.

He hoped it wouldn't be to his death. Then everyone would know that he couldn't fly, Rogers with his sneer and cutting words, I know men worth 10 of you. Men who don’t need a fancy suit because they’re too lazy to fly, Pepper and Rhodey and Happy with their genuine care. Well, it was good to know that whatever report they’d given Rogers, they either hadn't figured it out, or left it out.

He kept his wings close behind him, but spread his arms and legs to stabilise himself as the armour locked onto his bracelets. “There’s one other person you pissed off. His name was Phil.” He said, letting his armor-covered wings stretch out to their full length, aiming a repulsor at Loki.

That asshole was going to pay.

They’d won. He’d gone to space and came back out and they’d won.

The Avengers, as they were apparently calling themselves, moved into the tower. He knew most of them didn't have a home to call their own, a roost, a nest, and he liked them. 

And so, they became an actual team.

Maybe, Tony thought, as he hung onto the metal bar next to the gaping hole in the jet, the suit long gone and as Steve, the only one left in the jet with him, urged him to jump, maybe keeping the whole flightlessness thing a secret hadn't been the best idea. 

Steve was still shouting at him, the words lost over the roar of wind, but Tony got the gist. Steve grabbed his arm and tugged, moving closer, and Tony shook his head, because he did not want to die impaled on a pine tree in the middle of nowhere. 

Steve furrowd his brow, and even though his head was right next to Tony’s, he still had to yell to make himself heard. “WE NEED TO JUMP.” He shouted, his eyes pleading.

“I CAN’T,” Tony replied. Steve frowned. “I CAN’T FLY. YOU GO.” He said, and emotions flashed over Steve’s face, confusion and anger and resignation, and Tony briefly rued the fact that the parachutes had been concealed in the piece of wall that was currently debris on a mountain somewhere west of them before Steve grabbed him around the middle, and hurled them both out of the plane.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” He yelled, trying to free himself because he could die, that was fine (well, not fine, but he was in denial), but he was not going to bring Steve down with him. Thanks to Steve’s stubbornness, super strength, and the fact that his arms were crushed against Steve’s chest, he didn't have much luck. 

Steve didn't respond, and Tony couldn't see anything, just navy uniform and gold hair and gold feathers, but he felt them slowing down, felt Steve’s chest heaving with the effort, and before he knew it, they had landed.

An actual landing, no blood or injury or broken trees, But Tony still stumbled when Steve finally let go of him.

Before either of them could say anything, there was a flash of red through the trees, an emergency flare arcing through the skies. Steve turned to him, expectant, and gestured to what he obviously thought was a trail, but was really, really not. “They’re not far. We can walk.” Steve said, like Tony had a choice.

So, they walked.

“So...” Steve started as he ducked under a pine branch. 

Tony sighed. Well, it wasn't as if he’d not know that Steve would try to talk about this eventually. “I can’t fly.” He said, mostly just wanting to get the conversation over with.

Steve turned, brow furrowed, but he didn't look upset or disappointed or anything that Tony had been expecting, just confused. His eyes flickered between Tony’s wings, and his face, and back, and it was like Tony could see the thought process going on in his head. He opened his mouth to say something, but Tony beat him to it, tapping the reactor. “This thing replaces a good portion of my sternum. Even if I could regrow all the flight muscles, there wouldn't be anything for them to anchor to. Even If I could take this out, replace the chunk of sternum, and regrow the muscle, my lungs and heart would still be too fucked up to get them enough oxygen.” He explained, honestly a little relieved to say it. “I’m just not strong enough.” He smiled, rueful and self-deprecating.

All Steve said was, “Oh,” And he turned back to continue walking. It seemed like the conversation was over, but Tony could tell that Steve wanted to say something, ask something.

“Just ask.” He snapped, annoyed.Steve’s head whirled back around, face flushed in embarrassment and eyes wide. 

“If-” Steve started, and cleared his throat. “Why didn't you have any parachutes? In the plane?” He asked, and he sounded so earnestly confused.

“That’s your question?” Tony blurted and waved his hands, trying to get Steve to ignore what he just said. “And, I did have parachutes. I’m sure you can guess which wall they were in.” He said, and Steve nodded, like that made perfect sense, before turning back to the trail Tony could still swear didn't actually exist. “That’s it? You’re not-”

“I’m not.” Steve agreed, not turning back around. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re not a liability. It hasn't mattered until now, has it?” Steve asked, but didn't pause long enough to let Tony respond. “Thank you for telling me.” He said, and that was that.

Tony was sitting on the busted suitcase suit around a fire that Steve had made while the team waited for SHIELD to pick them up. The members of the Hydra cell that had been camped out here and that had shot them down were tied to a tree, no longer a threat.

He took a bite out of his piece of duck, chewed slowly, and swallowed. He cleared his throat, and it was so loud in the otherwise silient nighttime that everyone looked up at him. “I can’t fly. Just thought you guys should know.” He said, and waited on the reactions.

There was... surprising little. Thor just nodded sagely and held up Moljnir, his lack of wings a glaring hole behind him. “I thought as much,” Bruce said, at the same time Natasha spoke up.

“So it wasn't the palladium?” She asked, and tilted her head when he nodded. 

Clint... looked mildly constipated, face twisted like he was trying to solve a particularly hard math problem. “Wait, then why didn't-”

“Oh my god, there were parachutes on the jet, I am not an idiot, they were in the wall that got exploded!” Tony snapped, throwing his hands in the air, but grinning. Clint accepted that, and grinned back before trying to steal a piece of duck from Natasha. It didn't go well for him.

And, that was that. He’d told Pepper and Rhodey as well, who confessed that they’d known all along.

In the end, the only thing that changed was the varied location of the parachutes in the quinjet.

[mintchocolateleaves]

We’ve Only Just Begun (2/??)

Summary:  The world comes to a halt, everything torn apart, All-Might left as dust, Deku the last hero left standing. In this world the villains win. In a fit of desperation, Midoriya Izuku turns the clocks back. In a fit of desperation, he rewrites everything. TimeTravel!AU

[Beginning]

Before

Embers from the fire crackle beneath his feet. Izuku stomps on them until all that remains is ashes, black soot staining the side of his shoes.

“Jeez Deku,” the voice is feminine, and Izuku resists the urge to turn, instead leaning down to grasp at a single page that's not burnt into embers. It crumbles beneath his fingers, joins the pile of ashes as if it'd not been holding on seconds before. “Reckless much?”

If lighting a fire in the hopes that anybody – hero or villain, as long as they're alive it doesn't matter who – will notice is reckless, Izuku supposes he's the most reckless person alive.

“You're back,” he says, deciding not to respond to the goad. He shifts, forces himself to turn away from the fire, the burnt remains of bloodied textbooks, “I was beginning to think you were dead.”

He receives a look that's neither annoyed, nor particularly worried. Izuku thinks the look might be more exasperated than anything, but in an almost... fond way? He doesn't know, it's a lot more difficult than it used to be to read Uraraka Ochako's expressions these days.

“You know, I'm starting to miss when the way you used to be so naive.” Uraraka states, huffing as she jumps from some of the rubble. The street is a fairly open one, mainly because buildings have been levelled, leaving behind nothing short of ruins.

Izuku feels the same. He missed the smiles she'd worn once, the way they'd both been able to laugh when talking to their classmates. Now, most of their classmates are gone and they've lost the innocence they'd once worn like badges.

Now, Uraraka fights dirty.

They both do. It's the only way to fight fair.

“We can't afford to be naïve any more Uraraka–”

“I found it,” she interrupts before he can remind her that being naïve only gets everyone killed – (They're living proof aren't they? They know first hand). “I found Todoroki's transmitter.”

They've been searching for it for weeks. Ever since they first heard word of the raids and linked them with Todoroki's lack of response to radio transmissions. And now, finally, they've got it.

“Any sign of tampering?”

Uraraka shakes her head. The transmitter isn't something easily found, a seemingly common object that any who don't know it's true purpose will overlook.

“Have you listened to it yet?”

She shakes her head again. Dropping the transmitted into Izuku's hand, she says, “I didn't want to listen to it alone.”

Understandable.

Izuku presses play.

After

Izuku refuses to wear the mask.

Maybe it had been cool the first time he'd been fifteen, for the thirty minutes it had lasted when he'd first worn it. But it'd quickly lost any cool-factor by the time it had been repaired and he'd been expected to wear it again. By the time he'd turned sixteen, it'd been cringe worthy.

Now, it's just mortifying.

Instead of embarrassing himself – and by association All-Might, (subtlety has never been Izuku's strong point) – he stuffs the mask into his back when he's certain none of his classmates are watching. He zips up his bag with a hum to his voice, listening to his classmates gush over their costumes and kicks it under his desk just in time for All-Might to tell them which training area they're going to for today's class.

By the time Izuku has changed into his costume, racing towards training grounds, his mask is too far away for him to change his mind. He almost thinks that will be enough to stop people from commenting.

They still do though – comment, that is.

“Oh, Deku,” Uraraka says when she notices him jogging towards the group, readying himself with quick stretches. It's odd moving in his costume again, the way it feels glued to his arms. It's light, yes, but the colour scheme is to bright, almost as if it's inviting trouble.

It is, but Izuku doesn't need to be particularly happy about that.

Uraraka continues when she receives a small wave. “You don't have a mask?”

Izuku rubs at the back of his neck, offers an almost awkward laugh. Shaking his head, he says, “I must have forgotten to put one in the design I put on my special request form...”

A smile. It's almost refreshing to have one thrown his way, although the pat he receives on the shoulder is little more than alarming. Izuku freezes from the touch, attempts to override the instinct to grab Uraraka's wrist and throw her to the ground.

Thankfully, they both remain rooted to the ground. After a second, Izuku's shoulders loosen out. And Uraraka mentions nothing, which is nice, especially since she's probably already noticed the way he's stiffened at the touch.

Hopefully, she'll weigh it up as the result of bullying. It's the most plausible answer, after all.

“Either way, you're costume looks really practical!” Uraraka says, her grin never once wavering. She looks down at her own suit, pulls a face. Izuku resists the urge to laugh, mainly because he doesn't want her to think he's laughing at her. “I kind of wish I'd been more specific on mine, you know?”

Izuku drops his arm, offers a grin. He says, “I kinda like it though, it reminds me of an astronaut.” He pauses, watches as her eyes sparkle. “I think it really fits your quirk.”

Uraraka scratches at her cheek, but Izuku can practically feel the happiness rolling off of her. It's like waves – he hopes it's infectious, because seriously, looking at some of his classmates they really need to just... chill out. “I didn't think of that...”

She hadn't the first time either. Her own lack of enthusiasm about her costume had lowered her own self esteem; To think that just a few words would make her happier. Izuku almost wants to punch 'past him' for not speaking the first time.

There's not enough time for either of them to continue any further conversation – a small blessing, Izuku thinks – as All-Might's voice booms from the front of the class. It doesn't take long for him to explain the rules, indoor anti-personnel training is pretty straightforward after all. And soon they're being sorted into their groups.

Like before, Izuku is teamed with Uraraka. They're group A. The Heroes.

Nothing's changed on that front. Izuku's still got to fight Iida and Kacchan. They play the role of villain, get to go in five minutes before Team A.

As the others make their way towards the monitoring room, Kacchan and Iida making their way into the building, Izuku turns to Uraraka. They'll have to take this five minutes to form a semi-coherent plan, in order to take both 'villains' down and steal away the fake nuclear weapon.

“Uraraka,” Izuku says, raking his mind for how it had gone the first time. It'd been years ago, and Izuku's pretty sure the only reason he can still remember is because Kacchan hadn't let him forget. It'd been embarrassing to lose against him the first time, and it had only been like that because he and Uraraka hadn't worked together properly. “Let's come up with a plan.”

Uraraka nods, passes him the building plans that they'd been given before hand. She says, “yeah, we should memorise these right?”

“Yeah,” Izuku glances at the paper, memorises probable routes in and out of the building. The windows have reinforced glass, which while he could punch through them, he doesn't quite want to risk making too much sound. “But really, we need to come up with a way to fight Kacchan.”

Uraraka glances up from the plans, offers him a grimace. “Bakugo's the one who bullies you, right?”

“Yeah,” Izuku says, not that it bothers him much any more. It's not really been at the forefront of his mind in recent years, sharing a bigger enemy and having to work together had kind of... forced Kacchan to mellow towards him. “But let's focus on this...”

He receives a hesitant nod, which, is probably the best he's going to get on Kacchan related matters amongst his classmates.

“Anyway,” Izuku says, “Kacchan's probably going to leave Iida behind and seek me out to fight. So... let's come up with a plan to fight him when he does.”

“You're really serious about this Deku,” Uraraka laughs, but she seems excited. “I almost feel like we're actual heroes.”

The infiltration into the building is quick. Instead of wearing themselves out by racing up the stairs to one of the open windows, they use Uraraka's quirk to quickly float upwards. It's a familiar feeling, but Uraraka gives him a grin after they enter the building.

“I'm surprised you don't feel queasy,” she says, as they climb in through the window. Izuku sends her a strained smile – resists saying anti-gravity quirks are like roller-coasters, go on them enough and you become desensitised – and points forward.

“There's lots of blind corners,” he says, bites into his lip, “so watch out for Kacchan, okay?”

Izuku isn't completely sure how much of One for All he can use. Certainly not 100%, even with the mental understanding, he'll need to strengthen his body before he can even risk it. With how tense he feels, and his own feeling of being mismatched – (his own balance seems slightly off, he'd been taller than this, more toned) – he can't really use more than 15% without leaving himself injured.

Not that he'll need 15% of his power though, inside a tight space like this one anything more than 10% will easily take a turn for the dangerous.

“Sure,” Uraraka responds, turning the corner behind him. Izuku feels almost guilty for taking the lead, but they'd quickly decided that if Kacchan was going to aim any ambush around him, then he needs to be in front as a form of bait.

(Izuku hadn't actually called it bait, there's something about the word that he knows Uraraka won't sit well with. Instead, he's just... 'diverting Kacchan's attention.')

They make their way up one flight of stairs before things become more... tense. Izuku wonders whether Uraraka feels it, the heaviness that seems to filter into the air, but by the continued spring to her step, she doesn't.

He'd not been expecting her too – she's not been weathered with many battles yet, doesn't feel the slight shifts as they come across someone with malicious intent.

So while Kacchan's attack isn't so much a surprise to him, for Uraraka it seems to come out of nowhere. Izuku has to grab her arm and force them both out of the way of the explosion that follows from Kacchan throwing himself into the corridor.

“You okay?” Izuku asks as he glances down at Uraraka. The blast has thrown them both off of their feet, but while Izuku's been quick to roll back onto his feet, she's only just managing to pick herself up. She even takes a few seconds to brush dirt from her costume which – Izuku refuses to roll his eyes, but he certainly wants to.

“Nice dodging Deku,” Kacchan says, and it's the first time he's heard his voice today. Which means, it's the first time hearing that almost-feral voice in months.

Okay, maybe not wearing the mask was a bit stupid. Izuku wishes he'd have worn it just to avoid the tears. Seriously, he tells himself, I should not be this emotional.

“I just knew that you'd come after me,” Izuku mutters, glances at Kacchan's form. It's not difficult to read into his muscles, but even without the insight to each of his movements, Izuku already knows how he's going to move. Part of being a hero includes knowing how your teammates will act and reacting to make sure you can accommodate for their weaknesses, openings that villains might take advantage of.

Sorry, Izuku thinks as Kacchan growls at him, rearing his right arm back, but I'm taking advantage of our friendship.

Izuku sidesteps, wraps both hands around Kacchan's wrist. Jutting an elbow up, he swipes Kacchan's feet out from beneath him, throws him over his shoulder.

As Kacchan lands, Izuku sidesteps him, so that he and Uraraka are on opposite sides. Not that Kacchan would ever consider running, but it gives them an advantage of sorts. Plus, if Izuku's the sole focus of the fight, then if gives Uraraka a better chance at going undetected and helping him.

“I know your fighting style Kacchan,” Izuku says when his friend stands up, and maybe he's goading him a little bit, but the more riled up he can get the other boy, the wilder his attacks will be. If he can break through any plan Kacchan has, forcing him to rely purely on instinct, Izuku will have the upper hand.

Or something like that.

Kacchan glares, “fucking shut up Deku. You're pissing me off.”

Yes, Izuku thinks, that's the plan.

Izuku blocks the next kick with both arms. Throws himself back into a roll at a following explosion, eyes flickering every so often back to Uraraka, floating above them waiting for just the right moment to turn her own gravity back on. She's got her capture tape in her hands, pulled out, poised for an opening.

How much time do they have left of their original fifteen minutes? Still more than ten, Izuku's certain of that much.

Another explosion – this one is weaker, there's a lack of nitroglycerin stored back already – and instead of flinching away from the flames, Izuku throws himself towards it. It's hot against his skin, but the heat dissipates as he flicks it away with a finger, using 1% of his quirk to brush the flames away so the fire fans out around him.

His finger still stings though, from the touch. He'll need to make sure it doesn't blister when they finish the training session, because while cuts and bruises are a pain, burns are always the worst.

This time, when he swipes Kacchan's feet from beneath him, he grabs at his shoulders, using his momentum coming forward to tackle him to the floor. At this point, he calls Uraraka's name, lets out a sigh of relief as she drops opposite him, holding one end of the tape and throwing the other end out to Izuku.

Izuku catches, stretches the tape out more, and by the time Kacchan's risen to his feet, he's entangled in capture tape. His face goes red, but Izuku glances at Uraraka with a smile, ignoring the swearing echoing the corridor.

“We caught a villain,” Izuku says, stepping towards Uraraka and glancing in the direction Kacchan had arrived in. “Let's go steal that nuclear weapon, alright?”

Uraraka nods, and they leave Bakugo behind, captured as they race to the weapon room.

They use up more of their time simply making their way to the room where Iida stands protecting the 'weapon' but they still have roughly seven minutes by the time they get outside the room.

“We either need to capture Iida,” Izuku whispers to Uraraka as they peer around the corner into the room. There's a distinct lack of objects, which means it's going to be difficult for Uraraka to use her quirk. “Or we take the weapon.”

The weapon seems like the easier option. With Iida's speed quirk, it'll be nigh-impossible to corner him and capture him with tape. Izuku turns, ready to relay the plan to Uraraka when a large boom echoes through the corridor.

“Wha-” Uraraka glances up, just as Izuku glances over his shoulder.

Kacchan.

The second explosion is bigger. Fire doesn't just explode, it engulfs the corridor. The shock of the boom leaves Izuku's ears ringing, the explosion blasting through the walls. Izuku doesn't have the time to throw himself into the room with Iida, and he is thrown backwards along with the blast, into the next room.

He hits his head on one of the walls, but the force isn't enough to cause any more than a sharp pain. Maybe he's concussed, but Izuku isn't sure, there's adrenaline pumping through his veins overriding everything else. No wait – Izuku's pretty sure he's got a burn on his shoulder, it's numb.

Izuku stands up, glances around.

The world shimmers for a moment. And it's not like Izuku wants to see red, but for a moment that's all he can see. The walls are rubble and it's like he's back there, grey bricks stained with blood.

It splatters the walls, stains the floors. And there's so much on Izuku's hands that he'll never be able to scrub it off, it's under his nails and – and Oh God there's blood everywhere and – And -

And –

Where's Uraraka?

“Deku, are you okay?” Uraraka's voice echoes through the transmitter in his ear, worried. But it's most certainly her voice.

When Izuku blinks, everything is back as it should be. Except, Kacchan stands in front of him, not glaring now. No, he's glowering, eyes clouded with something akin to fury.

“What's wrong Deku,” Kacchan growls, as Izuku glances up at him, trying to calm his own heartbeat, “you're still alive aren't you?”

“We caught you,” Izuku mutters. He's quiet, but the sound carries, and Kacchan eye twitches. “This is just poor sportsmanship.”

“You think real fucking villains are just gonna step out when you fucking capture them?” Kacchan snarls stepping down from some of the rubble, “get real. You wanna be a fucking hero right? Act like one.”

Izuku clenches his teeth. Uraraka asks again whether he's okay, but it's impossible to find his words.

“Fucking use your quirk this time,” Kacchan says, voice low and menacing as he takes another step toward him. “Because I'm going to beat you at your strongest, Deku.”

[Next]

[howellrichard]

11 Life-Changing Tips for Cancer Patients

Hiya Gorgeous,

I could not be more thrilled about the response so far to the Healing Cancer World Summit! Registration has been through the roof and people from all over the world are sharing their excitement. If you haven’t saved your seat yet, don’t wait another minute! This experience wouldn’t be the same without you.

Register for the FREE Healing Cancer World Summit!

When this Summit was still just an idea—before Hay House and I strategized, brainstormed and planned our butts off—I knew one thing for sure: I wanted this to be the most practical, useful event about cancer and prevention that you’ve ever attended. I knew that in order to truly support you on your healing journey, the lessons had to be chock-full of tools and advice you could put to use right away.

And while that advice could be life-changing, it couldn’t be overwhelming, fear-based or take forever to see the benefits. Because whether or not you or someone you love is currently facing a diagnosis, you’ve got enough going on in your life. I want to help you make things easier, not more complicated.

Today, I’m happy to report that that’s exactly what you can expect from the Healing Cancer World Summit. You’ll walk away from each and every incredible session with new tips to help you navigate a cancer diagnosis, feel better and more rested, reduce stress and fear, create or enhance your spiritual practice, connect more deeply with yourself and others, and so much more. I can’t wait for you to get your hands on these wonderful resources.

And when I say “I can’t wait,” I mean… I really can’t! That’s why I decided to update and bring back one of my favorite (and most popular!) posts of all time and share it with you today.

The eleven tips you’re about to read have been life-changing for me. Some of them may seem simple, but I come back to these practices whenever I need to get grounded and remind myself that living with cancer can be healthy—it can even be vibrant, abundant and filled with beauty.

Whether or not you’re living with cancer like me, these tips are universal. I know you’re going to find something (or maybe a few things!) that resonates with you.

So, let’s dive in…

During my teens and twenties, I celebrated (or avoided) Valentine’s Day. Each year had its own flavor. Heartache, romantic plans gone awry and some very sweet moments, too. But, February 14, 2003 changed that day forever. That’s the day I was diagnosed with an incurable, stage IV cancer.

Life stopped… and then transformed.

Valentine’s Day is a very spiritual celebration now. I call it my “cancerversary,” a day of deep self-love, reflection, gratitude and re-birth. It took me over a decade, post-diagnosis, to get to that sacred place. But, I’m here now and if you’re newly diagnosed, trust that you will get there, too.

For many patients, cancer is no longer a death sentence.

Really take that in. The first doctor I spoke to suggested a triple organ transplant, the second gave me 10 years to live. Thankfully, both were wrong and I didn’t listen. If you’ve been given statistical projections or an expiration date, there’s a good chance your well-meaning doctor could be wrong, too.

Once I found a better oncologist for my disease, my entire world opened up. As you may know, I have a weird slow-moving (could get aggressive one day) sarcoma. And though I’m living with cancer, I do it in a healthy, harmonious way. In fact, today I call myself a cancer thriver and I bet that no matter what your personal, medical or emotional pickle is (cancer or something else), you can be a thriver, too.

I would never say that life with cancer is easy, but it can be quite stunning and rich, even in the midst of the pain. These tips have helped me feel better and get stronger along the way. I think they’ll be useful for you or someone you love, too.

11 Tips for Healthy Living with Cancer

1. When the going gets tough, take a really deep breath.

This is the first (and most important) move you can make when the shit hits the fan. There will be endless ideas, advice, theories and even some medical bullying slung your way. Your breath is the gateway to your intuition—it will help you navigate the noise. Breathe and listen. Your breath also has the power to reduce stress (more on that below). When we’re in prolonged fight or flight mode, it’s hard to make decisions and easy to get depressed, anxious and exhausted. Breathe.

2. Find the best oncologist for your disease.

If I had listened to the first doctor, I wouldn’t be here today. Thankfully, I was willing to travel to find the best oncologist for my sarcoma. If you’re newly diagnosed (with any medical issue), I highly suggest you do the same. Your life is in their hands. Do they have experience and access to the latest research? Are they tapped into a network of colleagues who can discuss your case? Your local hospital may not cut it. My oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute understands all the current traditional treatment options for my disease. I still haven’t had any conventional treatment, but should my disease become aggressive, he’d be my first stop (but not my last).

How to find an oncologist: Start by Googling the top 10 cancer hospitals in the U.S. Also, use the resources below to explore the best oncologist for your specific cancer. In addition to these tips, network! I’ve found the best support by asking my doctor, family and friends.

National Cancer Institute’s Office of Cancer Centers

American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Cancer.Net Cancer Specific Resources

Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA)

3. Your oncologist (or other doctor) probably isn’t enough.

Build an integrative team. Integrative and functional medicine practitioners treat your whole body, not just the symptoms. How do they do that? With dietary recommendations, targeted supplements, IVs, stress management tips and other integrative therapies that improve your overall well-being, including boosting your immune system.

How to find an integrative MD: Check out the directories below. Again, network your butt off. Ask around and interview the prospective healing candidates—that’s right, they work for you.

Find a Functional Medicine Practitioner

American College for Advancement in Medicine

American Association for Naturopathic Physicians

4. Reduce inflammation. Eat plants.

In a nutshell: Embrace gorgeous greens, beans, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains, sea veggies, fruits and vegetables galore. Crowd out inflammatory, hormone-filled dairy and other animal products (even organic) by filling your plate with plant-strong, whole foods. And while you’re at it, dump the processed white stuff, especially sugar (it feeds cancer and other bullshit). Speaking of sugar, choose low-glycemic fruits and desserts. If you’re not interested in going full tilt vegan, make plants your main dish and think of everything else as a condiment. If you don’t ditch animal products, reduce your consumption to 2-3 times per week and avoid factory farm products at all costs. For delicious recipes, check out our recipe section at Kriscarr.com, Crazy Sexy Juice and Crazy Sexy Kitchen.

5. Juice your ass off. Not sugary juices.

Avoid store bought processed juices and choose fresh, green, healing juices that you make yourself. Organic is definitely best if you can afford it. If not, check out the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen for guidance on avoiding chemical-laden produce. Without a shadow of a doubt, my daily, low-glycemic green juice practice has allowed me to thrive in spite of my obstacles. My basic juicing rule for patients is a 3:1 ratio—three veggies to one low-glycemic fruit. You can also add lemon, as it has very little sugar. Ginger rocks too. Juices are nutrient dense, hydrating, energizing and medicinal. If you only have a blender, that’s great, too. Make green smoothies instead. Cheers!

6. Choose safe personal care and cleaning products.

The average person uses 9 personal care products per day containing about 126 chemical ingredients. But, the FDA doesn’t review or approve the majority of these products before they go to market. In addition, companies aren’t required to test their products and are allowed to leave hazardous chemicals off their labels. So, it’s no surprise that many of the chemicals found in personal care products have been linked to increased risks of cancer, infertility, birth defects, hormone disruption, etc. Babies, children, teens, adults—we’re all exposed to these chemicals on a daily basis and there’s still much we do not know about their long-term health effects. The same holds true for household cleaning products. Is your laundry detergent safe? Find out. Use the EWG’s Skin Deep Database and learn about toxic chemicals and body burden here.

7. Sedentary lifestyles are actually dangerous.

While it’s important to rest, lack of exercise actually speeds up muscle wasting, weakens your endurance and immunity, and creates more fatigue. Your body needs to move and stay strong. You’ll handle cancer treatments and other medical procedures better and recover faster when you have more muscle tone and flexibility. Did I mention proper bowel movements? Yeah… movement helps with that, too (pun intended!). Exercise also reduces inflammation and growth stimulators like estrogen, insulin and IGF-1. Studies have shown that even short bursts of exercise can have impressive results for your health. You don’t need a lot of time or fancy equipment to make a difference. But, you gotta get out of your chair and commit to some form of moderate exercise on a regular (almost daily) basis. Light weights, yoga, dance, martial arts—whatever rings your bell! Start with 10 minutes a day and see if you can work up to 30-60 minutes (do your best and always listen to your body).

8. Sleep like a champ.

A proper night’s sleep, especially between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., will help you heal—for real. Not only will you be able to respond to treatments better, but restful sleep activates your body’s own regenerative abilities. You don’t have to enter monastic life and stick to perfect sleep hygiene, ya just need to create the conditions for more sleep on a consistent basis. Keep your room cool, block out all light, dump the coffee by noon—or switch to green tea (coffee = 140 milligrams of caffeine per serving, green tea = 25 milligrams)—peel back on the alcohol and drink it earlier with food (alcohol disrupts melatonin and blood sugar), give yourself time to wind down and set a loving intention: May I be peaceful, calm and sleepy!

The Healing Cancer World Summit starts on October 17!

REGISTER NOW!

9. Wrangle your stress.

Stress releases a cascade of hormones in your body. This is all well and good when you need to run or move out of the way quickly. But when the source of your stress is prolonged, like a cancer diagnosis that takes years or even a lifetime to manage, stress can become your number one enemy. Being diagnosed with cancer is one of the most traumatic events that can happen in anyone’s life. But, there are ways to manage the panic so it doesn’t weaken your immune system, disrupt your sleep and create more illness in your body. Meditation, hiking in the woods, pottery, yoga—anything that gets you out of your head and into your heart/body. In addition, you may need some good ole professional support. Yup, a shrink. Figure out what works for sweet you, and don’t forget a good ole massage from time to time. We hold so many issues in our precious tissues.

10. Accept where you are right now.

Unconditional acceptance is the path of the spiritual warrior. It takes courage to embrace your current situation—to be present and loving toward yourself exactly as you are. You are your reality. You are your truth. Can you change? Absolutely! But, even talking about change puts us in the future. And while there’s definitely a time for that, building a strong foundation in the now will allow you to consistently love and care for yourself. Stop for a minute. Give yourself props. Take in your good. If you’re hell bent on strategizing about all that could be better, then you must promise to give equal time to what’s amazing right now. When I was first diagnosed, my burning goal was remission. Anything else seemed like colossal failure. And, even worse—my fault. Over a decade later, I’m a master at my own advice. I accept wonderful me, cancer and all. Does that mean that I’ve given up on my health? Of course not! It means I love and respect myself no matter what.

Acceptance is different from quitting. It means that no matter what happens, you won’t abandon yourself in your time of need. And, here’s the part that contributes to your overall well-being: Acceptance allows you to rest, renew and replenish.

Life doesn’t start when “this, that or the other thing” is resolved. Life is now & it’s great! @Kris_Carr #cancer

11. Educate yourself.

Here are three powerful books that have been cancer lifelines for me:

1. Life Over Cancer by Keith Block M.D. (This is a must-read by my integrative oncologist.) 2. Anticancer Living by Lorenzo Cohen, PhD and Alison Jefferies (This book is outstanding!) 3. Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips by Kris Carr (Yours truly—writing that book rescued my life.)

I hope you’ll give these tips a try. Remember, you don’t have to transform your life overnight. Small, manageable changes go a long way when it comes to feeling better.

You are a treasured member of my virtual family, and I love you. Keep taking care of yourself. And here’s an extra special twelfth tip…

Join me for the Healing Cancer World Summit! I partnered with my friends at Hay House to bring you this free event packed with practical tools and tips to help you face cancer—whether you’re a patient, caregiver or interested in prevention. You’ll hear from 20 of the world’s leading integrative oncologists, nutritionists, wellness experts, spiritual teachers and remarkable patients.

Register here! The Healing Cancer World Summit runs from October 17-23.

Your turn: What tips and tricks have helped you along your health journey? Share in the comments below!

Peace & thriving,

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